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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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Shelf J 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE 



TWO BOOKS 



Nature and Revelation 



COLLATED 



\/ BY 

GEOEGE D. AEMSTEONG, D.D., 

Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Norfolk, Va., and formerly Prof essor 

of Chemistry and Geology in Washington and Lee University, 

Lexington, Va. 




FUNK & WAGNALLS. 

NEWYOEK: 1886. LONDON: 

10 and 12 Det Stbeet. 44 Fleet Street. 

All Hights Reserved. 



fit* 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1886, by 

PUNK & WAGNALLS, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C. 

J 



PREFACE 



It is sometimes said that scientific questions can be in- 
telligently decided by scientists alone ; and for this rea- 
son people of ordinary intelligence and education must 
take these decisions on trust. This is true respecting cer- 
tain questions ; but, at the same time, it is true that the 
great body of our modern science, the science involved 
in the decision of such questions as those discussed in the 
present volume, can be brought fully within the reach 
of the understanding of any well-informed man of aver- 
age intelligence, if an honest effort is made to do it. 
Such a man might not be able to construct the argument 
for himself, but when it is fairly presented he can judge 
and reach his conclusions for himself as safely as the 
scientist can. 

Edward Clodd, F.R.A.S., must have believed this 
in so far as the questions concerning primeval man are 
concerned, for he wrote his " Childhood of the World " 
for the use of youth in a course of education. Professor 
Huxley must have believed this in so far as evolution 
is concerned, for most of his " Lay Sermons and Ad- 
dresses" and his New York " Lectures on Evolution" 
were originally addressed to popular audiences. Pro- 
fessor Robertson Smith and Dr. Toy must have believed 
this in so far as the authenticity and genuineness of the 
Pentateuch are concerned, for the first-named addressed 
his " Lectures on the Old Testament in the Jewish 
Church" to a popular audience, and Dr. Toy wrote his 



IV PREFACE. 

' ' History of the Eeligion of Israel ' ' for the use of the 
advanced classes in Sabbath-schools. 

In the present volume the author has sought : (1) 
To popularize the discussion of the matters treated of, 
avoiding as far as possible the use of technical terms, 
or, where such terms were, for any reason, used, add- 
ing immediately an explanation thereof ; and (2) to 
bring the discussion within the limits of a single volume 
of moderate size, by taking no notice of irrelevant mat- 
ters and matters of little importance, and confining his 
attention to the strong points alone — the points upon 
which a correct decision of the questions at issue must 
turn. How far he has succeeded in this he must leave 
the reader to judge. 



CONTENTS. 



I.— NATURE AND REVELATION. 

PAGE 

§ 1. The Border-land. § 2. Science as yet Incomplete. 
§ 3. Premature Announcements. § 4. The Language of 
Scripture. § 5. The Author's Object in Writing 7 

II.— PRIMEVAL MAN. 

§ 6. The Question Stated. § 7. Advance and Degrada- 
tion alike Common. §8. True Significance of the "Ages." 
§ 9. The Testimony of Geology. § 10. The Testimony of 
Anthropology. § 11. The Testimony of Archaeology. 
§ 12. Conclusion from the Testimony of Science. § 13. 
The Cradle of the Human Race. § 14. The Antiquity of 
the Nations of Western Asia. § 15. The Antiquity of 
Egypt. § 16. Tradition Respecting the Confusion of 
Tongues. § 17. Tradition Respecting the Flood. § 18. Tradi- 
tion Respecting the Golden Age. § 19. Manetho, Berosus, and 
Moses Compared. § 20. Further Proof of the Credibility 
of the Pentateuch. § 21. Civilization of Primeval Man, 
according to the Pentateuch. § 22. Religion of Primeval 
Man, according to the Pentateuch. § 23. Conclusions 16 

III.— EVOLUTION. 

§ 24. Changes in Inorganic Nature. § 25. Changes which 
Constitute Growth. § 26. Changes which Last beyond the 
Life of the Individual. § 27. Evolution as held by Her- 
bert Spencer. § 28. Evolution as held by Charles Darwin. 
§ 29. Evolution in its Limited Range. § 30. Argu- 
ments for Evolution. § 31. Some Objections to Evolution. 
§ 32. Two Capital Objections to Evolution. § 33. Conclu- 
sions. § 34. Relation of Revelation to Evolution as Taught 
by Huxley. § 35. Relation of Revelation to Evolution as 
Taught by Darwin. § 36. Revelation and Evolution as 
Taught by Dr. Woodrow. § 37. Revelation and Evolution 
in its most Limited Range '. , 52 



Tl CONTENTS. 

IV.— THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

PAGE 

§38. A Remarkable Fact. §39. "In the Beginning," ac- 
cording to Moses. § 40. " In the Beginning," according to 
Science. § 41. Emergence from Chaos, according to Moses. 
§ 42. Emergence from Chaos, according to Science. § 43. 
The Creation of Plants and Animals, according to Moses. 
§ 44. The Creation of Plants and Animals, according to Sci- 
ence. § 45. The Creation of Man, according to Moses. 
§ 46. The Creation of Man, according to Science. § 47. 
The Age of the World. § 48. The Popular Method of Rec- 
onciliation. § 49. A Second Method of Reconciliation. 
§ 50. The Proper Position for the Christian Apologist. 
§ 51. Huxley's Objection to Creation as Supernatural. 
§ 52. Huxley's Objection to Creation as subject to no Law. 
§ 53. Huxley's Objection to Creation as implying an Extrav- 
agant Expenditure of Divine Power. § 54. Points at which 
the Hypothesis of Evolution Breaks down. § 55. Con- 
clusion 98 

V.-THE PENTATEUCH. 

§56. The "Higher Criticism." §57. The Question Stated. 
§ 58. The Pentateuch Claims Moses as its Author, and to be 
True History. § 59. Quotations of the Pentateuch as Au- 
thentic and Credible. § 60. Prophets and Apostles In- 
spired, Our Lord Divine. § 61. The Literary Style of the 
Pentateuch. § 62. Incidental Confirmations. § 63. The 
Character of the Communications. § 64. The Divine Ele- 
ment in the Authorship of the Pentateuch Ignored by the 
"Higher Critics." § 65. The Truth of Evolution Assumed 
by the " Higher Critics." § 66. Conclusions 153 

VI.— PROVIDENCE AND PRAYER. 

§ 67. A Statement of Professor Huxley. § 68. Effect of Mod- 
ern Science on Man's Conceptions of Nature. § 69. Hux- 
ley's Picture of our Cosmos Incomplete. § 70. The True 
Conception of Nature. § 71. Providence. § 72. Professor 
Tyndall's Prayer-Test. § 73. Tyndall's Test Practically 
Worthless. § 74. Tyndall's Test Impracticable. § 75. The 
Efficacy of Prayer Tested by Observation. § 76. Prayer 
Instinctive 186 



THE TWO BOOKS OF 

MUM AND REVELATION COLLATED. 



I. 

NATURE AND REVELATION". 

§ 1. " The Border-land." 

" The border-land between science and religion is one 
which men cannot be prevented from entering ; but what 
they may find there depends very much on themselves. 
Under wise guidance it may prove to us an Eden, the 
very gate of heaven, and we may acquire in it larger and 
more harmonious views of both the seen and the unseen, 
of science and religion. But, on the other hand, it may 
be found to be a battle-field or a bedlam, a place of con- 
fused cries and incoherent ravings, and strewn with the 
wrecks of human hopes and aspirations." (Dawson's 
" Facts and Fancies of Modern Science," p. 14.) 

What Principal Dawson here remarks as true of science 
and religion is, of necessity, true of science and the rev- 
elation of the one only true religion contained in the 
Scriptures. In making a revelation of religious truth in 
such a form as to be easily intelligible to man, especially 
" the common people," the Scriptures very wisely pre- 
sent us with, not a " Confession of Faith," not a 
treatise on " Systematic Theology," but with that truth 



8 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

as it is incorporated in the history of the Church and the 
life and experience of God's people in the world. The 
Bible contains very little didactic discussion or logical 
exhibition of the truth it teaches, but is largely made up 
of history, the biographies of saints and sinners, of 
psalms and proverbs and prophecies, and the story of 
the life and teachings of the God-man during His brief 
sojourn among men. Admitting, then, as every thought- 
ful reader must, that there is no intention on the part of 
the sacred writers to teach us science, in the distinctive 
sense of that term, in the Scriptures, it will be seen at 
once that the Scriptures, on the one hand, and geog- 
raphy, history, chronology, and science, physical and 
metaphysical, on the other, must often cover the same 
ground, not for the same purpose, it is true, but yet 
must often cover the same ground ; that there is a bor- 
der-land in which the students of Scripture and science 
must meet, and will have occasion to examine the same 
subjects, and deal with the same facts. As Principal 
Dawson remarks, " Man cannot be prevented from enter- 
ing this border-land ;" nor is it desirable, in the interest 
either of religion or science, that he should be. The 
Christian believes that the Bible and nature are both 
alike from God — a God of truth ; and from this it 
necessarily follows that when rightly interpreted they 
will harmonize and illustrate each other. Yet, as a 
matter of fact, nothing is more certain than that divines 
and scientists have often been in conflict ; and at the 
present day the most persistent attacks upon Christianity 
are from the side of science, thus illustrating the truth 
of the remark " that what men may find in this border- 
land depends very much upon themselves" — the pur- 
pose with which they enter that land, and the spirit in 
which they pursue their investigations. 



NATURE AND REVELATION. 9 

"At the time of the meeting of the British Association 
in 1865, some six hundred and seventeen scientific men 
signed a paper containing the following declaration — 
viz. : ' We conceive that it is impossible for the Word 
of God, as written in the book of nature, and God's 
word, written in Holy Scripture, to contradict one an- 
other, however much they may appear to differ. We 
are not forgetful that physical science is not complete, 
but is only in a condition of progress, and that at present 
our finite reason enables us to see as through a glass 
darkly, and we confidently believe that a time will come 
when the two records will be seen to agree in every par- 
ticular.'" ("Current Discussions in Theology for 
1883," pp. 7, 8.) 

§ 2. Science as yet Incomplete. 

There is and there can be no conflict between science 
and revelation ; but there is and there has long been 
conflict between scientists and divines ; and a fruitful 
source of this conflict is, as intimated in the paper of the 
British scientists, quoted above, the present incomplete- 
ness of science. Taking science as it is set forth in the 
popular writings of the day, we will find it consisting of 
two distinct and separable portions — viz. : (1) a body of 
well-ascertained facts and principles, which make up the 
science itself ; and (2) a body of hypotheses and con- 
jectures, more or less probable, by means of which men 
are endeavoring to enlarge the domain of science. It 
would be a great mistake to reject the use of all hy- 
potheses simply because they were unproven. The his- 
tory of science furnishes abundant evidence that hy- 
potheses, even such as have afterward turned out to be 
incorrect, have been of great use in directing the course 
of investigation and experiment on the part of those who 



10 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

were laboring for the enlargement of human knowledge. 
Like the scaffold used in the erection of a building, they 
have been of great service while the building is going 
up, though removed as of no value after the building is 
completed. But we should never forget that unproved 
hypotheses are not an integral part of science itself. 
Much of the seeming discrepancy between science and 
revelation to-day arises out of a disregard of this dis- 
tinction, and a consequent declaration that science tes- 
tifies to this, and science testifies to that, when, in fact, 
the testimony is not that of science, but that of some 
unproved hypothesis. Prof. Huxley never wrote a truer 
thing than when he wrote : u Men of science, like young 
colts in a fresh pasture, are apt to be exhilarated on 
being turned into a new field of inquiry, and to go off at 
a hand gallop, in total disregard of hedges and ditches, 
losing sight of the real limitation of their inquiries, and to 
forget the extreme imperfection of what is known." 
(" Origin of Species," Lecture I.) 

§ 3. Premature Announcements. 

In the early part of the present century a great excite- 
ment was created in the scientific world by the discovery 
of " the zodiacs of Dendera and Esne in Egypt." The 
zodiac painted upon the ceiling of the temple at Den- 
dera ' ' is headed by the sign of the Lion, followed by the 
Yirgin, the Balance, the Scorpion, the Archer, and Cap- 
ricorn in the same line. The peculiar arrangement of 
these figures represented, it was said, the exact position 
of the constellations when the zodiac was constructed, 
and it was ascertained by appropriate calculations that it 
was much older than the beginning of the period em- 
braced in the Christian chronology." In 1821 the 
zodiac of Dendera, having been carefully detached from 



NATURE AND REVELATION. 11 

the ceiling of the temple, was brought safely to Paris. 
si M. Greppo describes the interest which it awakened : 
an object of interest to educated men, and of vanity to 
those who thought themselves such, it could not remain 
unnoticed by the multitude ; and classes of society who 
knew not even the significance of the term zodiac rushed 
in crowds to behold it. In the journals, in the saloons, 
the zodiac was the only topic of discussion. Have you 
seen the zodiac ? What do you think of the zodiac ? 
were questions to which every one was seemingly com- 
pelled to give a well-informed answer, or to be degraded 
from a place in polished society. Tracts were circulated 
in Paris to disseminate the fact that the Christian chro- 
nology was set aside." (Southall's " Eecent Origin of 
Man, ' ' pp. 76, 77. ) Subsequent and more thorough in- 
vestigation, especially that of the younger Champollion 
in Egypt, has shown, beyond all question, that this an- 
nouncement was premature, that " these zodiacs be- 
longed to the first and second centuries of the Christian 
era, and were ' schemes of nativity, ' and had reference 
to ' judicial astrology. 5 " 

In his admirable lecture on " The Education of the 
Judgment," Professor Faraday dwells upon the impor- 
tance of " reserving judgment" in matters imperfectly 
known. Had scientists generally learned this lesson, the 
history of modern science would have furnished no occa- 
sion for such a chapter as Chapter Y. in Southall's " Re- 
cent Origin of Man" on " The Fickleness of Science." 

§ 4. The Language of Scripture. 

The language of common life is very different from 
that of science. In common life we speak of things as 
they appear, as they become known to us directly 
through the use of our senses. In science we seek to 



12 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

represent things as they really are, and to do this with 
accuracy and completeness ; and as science has es- 
pecially to do with the relation of cause and effect, we 
speak of phenomena with the purpose of expressing this 
relation. In the language of common life we say the 
sun rises ; and this, although we know perfectly well that 
the motion of the sun is apparent and not real — pro- 
duced by the turning of the earth upon its axis. In the 
language of astronomy we would say the sun appeared 
above the horizon in consequence of the revolution of the 
earth upon its axis ; or, if we wished to be particularly 
accurate, we would add, and the earth's motion in its 
orbit, and the refraction of light in passing through the 
earth's atmosphere ; for both of these last-mentioned 
causes has something to do with the time of the sun's 
appearance above the horizon. 

To the use of scientific language in common life there 
are two objections — viz. : 

(1) Such language is, to a large extent, unintelligible 
to the mass of the people. Even among the learned, in 
one department of science, the language of another de- 
partment may be unintelligible. Many an able mathe- 
matician cannot read understanding^ a page of modern 
chemistry ; and many an accomplished chemist would 
find himself completely at a loss in attempting to get at 
the meaning of a page of the best treatise we have on 
analytical geometry. 

(2) Scientific language, especially that of w r hat are 
called, distinctively, the natural sciences, generally in- 
corporates in itself so much of current hypothesis — often 
of hypothesis afterward abandoned — that the writings 
of the men of one age are unintelligible to those of 
another, unless read in the light which the history of the 
science casts upon their meaning. In illustration of this 



NATURE AND REVELATION. 13 

remark, take a brief extract from Nicholson's " Philos- 
ophy," a standard work in its department a century ago. 

In his chapter on " The Marine Acid, and the Com- 
binations in which it is a Principal Part," Nicholson 
writes : " Black manganese is the calx of a semi-metal, 
which has a strong tendency to combine with phlogiston. 
If four ounces of marine acid, with one ounce of this calx, 
be put into a retort, to which the apparatus used in dis- 
tilling the marine acid has been previously adapted, yellow 
vapors are abundantly disengaged, at first without the 
assistance of fire, and afterward by means of heat. 
. . . This vapor is found to consist of marine acid de- 
prived of one of its constituent parts — namely, phlogis- 
ton (according to Scheele ; but JBerthollet has rendered 
it probable that it consists of dephlogisticated air, com- 
bined with marine acid). It attacks phlogistic bodies 
with great vehemence, and dissolves all the metals 
directly, affording the same salts as the entire acid does, 
but without disengaging any inflammable air." This 
passage will be utterly unintelligible to the common 
reader ; and even to many a young chemist of the 
present day ; and this for the reason that Nicholson, 
in stating a fact, has incorporated in his statement the 
exploded theory of phlogiston — a theory once univer- 
sally accepted by chemists, and clung to even after the 
progress of discovery compelled them to suppose that 
phlogiston was lighter than nothing ; that instead of pos- 
sessing weight, as other elements did, it possessed the 
opposite of weight — i.e., levity, as they styled it. 

For such reasons as these, the use of scientific lan- 
guage is limited to treatises on science ; while the lan- 
guage of common life is that used in all other writings ; 
and this, even where the greatest accuracy is desired. 
The carefully written laws of the land speak of the sun's 



14 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

rising and setting as familiarly as men do in common 
conversation. Indeed, in so far as the truth intended 
to be expressed is concerned, the language of common 
life is as accurate as the language of science. When 
I say the sun rises I mean to tell of a certain phenom- 
enon — i.e., a certain thing as it appears, as it is made 
known to my senses, and not that event in relation to 
its cause, as the astronomer does. For the same reasons 
that the language of common life is that used by all men 
in writing history, geography, chronology, and even 
the laws of the land, that language has been used, under 
the Divine direction, in writing the Holy Scriptures. 
Ignorance of this truth, so reasonable in itself, or a wil- 
ful disregard of it in interpreting the Scriptures, has been 
the cause of much of the conflict between scientists and 
divines since the revival of learning in these modern 
times. 

§ 5. The Author's Object in Writing. 

Bearing in mind " the incompleteness of science," the 
author, in the following papers, has not attempted to 
work out a harmony of science and revelation — that is, 
a work belonging to the future. What he has attempted, 
as the general title of the work indicates, is to collate the 
two books of nature and revelation ; and this with the 
design (1) of directing the reader's attention to the points 
in which the latest results of scientific investigation and 
the statements of revelation, put on record many cen- 
turies ago, are at one ; and (2) to show that, even on 
points in which, at present, there is apparent discrepancy, 
there is no necessary contradiction. Having been a stu- 
dent of science for half a century, and for some of the 
best years of his life a teacher of science also, and 
through all these years a devout student of Scripture, 
he can heartily indorse the declaration of the British 



NATURE AND REVELATION. 15 

scientists, quoted in § 1 — " We confidently believe that 
a time will come when the two records will be seen to 
agree in every particular." 

The papers embraced in this volume have been writ- 
ten, and several of them given to the public, either 
through the press or from the platform, in the course of 
the last few years ; but all of them have now been care- 
fully rewritten, so as to embody the latest results of 
scientific research and biblical criticism, and thus a true 
representation of the case as it stands to-day. 



II. 

PKIMEVAL MAN.* 
§ 6. The Question Stated. 

HOW LONG AGO, AND IN WHAT CONDITION AS TO CIVILIZATION AND RE- 
LIGION, did the Race of Man begin its Couese in the Would ? 

Until very recently the opinion entertained by those 
who thought upon the subject at all was, that man was 
created some six or seven thousand years ago,f and that 
he commenced his course as a civilized being, believing 
in the one only living and true God. 

A far greater antiquity has been claimed for him by 
some of late years ; and we are told that man, beginning 
his course as a savage, has gradually raised himself 
through what are termed the paleolithic, the neolithic, 
the bronze, and the iron ages, each of which lasted for 
many thousands of years, until he reached the begin- 

* The substance of this paper was originally delivered as a lec- 
ture at the Summer School of the American Institute of Christian 
Philosophy, at Key East, N. J., July 29th, 1885, and subsequently 
published in Christian Thought. 

f "A world's era, dating from the creation, and constructed out 
of the Old Testament, was in use among the Jews at the time of 
Christ. The Jewish historian Josephus employs it in his work on 
archaeology. Such an era seems to recommend itself in several re- 
spects, but its construction presents difficulties which can hardly 
ever be overcome. Every scholar who tries it comes to a different re- 
sult. Julius Africanus counts from the creation to Christ 5500 
years ; Eusebius, Bede, and the Koman Martyrologum, 5199 ; Scaliger 
and Calvisius, 3950 ; Kepler and Petarius, 3984 ; Usher, followed by 
our English Bibles, 4004. " — Schaff-Herzog's Encyclopcedia, art. "Era." 



PRIMEVAL MAN". 17 

nings of our modern civilization. This opinion has been 
supported with especial zeal by those who adopt the 
hypothesis of man's evolution from the brute ; indeed, 
it would seem to be a necessary consequence of such an 
origin for him, even though evolution be regarded but 
as ' ' a mode of creation. " To an examination of the 
problem thus presented we will now turn our attention. 

§ 7. Advance and Degradation alike Common. 

Beginning our examination, where all examination of 
such a subject must begin, if we would arrive at the 
truth, with the present condition of man, we find him 
in every possible stage of civilization, from the utter 
savagery of the Digger Indians of North America and 
the Weddas of Ceylon to the advanced civilization of 
the English-speaking nations, who dominate the world. 
And comparing the present condition of the nations 
with what authentic history tells us it was a few centuries 
ago, we learn that while some nations have been steadily 
advancing in civilization, others have been stationary, 
and others, again, have retrograded. The American 
Encylopsedia, in its article on Ethnology, written by an 
evolutionist and an advocate of the great antiquity of 
man, marks only five of the thirteen great families into 
which it divides the human race as advancing in civiliza- 
tion at the present time, while four are stationary, and 
the remaining four are retrograding. 

An instance of retrogradation is furnished us by the 
aborigines of our own country. " There are abundant 
remains," writes Sir John Lubbock, " of a very ancient 
American civilization, which was marked by the con- 
struction of great public works and by the development 
of an agriculture founded on the maize, which is a cereal 
indigenous to the continent of America. This civiliza- 



18 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

tion was subsequently lost, and then succeeded a period 
in which man relapsed into partial barbarism." (" Pre- 
historic Times," p. 234.) 

An instance of the extreme degradation of a once 
highly civilized people we have in the Veddas, or 
Weddas, of Ceylon. Of this people Canon Eawlinson tells 
us that a careful study of their language proves them to 
be " the degenerate descendants of the Sanskrit Aryans 
who conquered India;" and he adds: "It is difficult 
to conceive of a degradation which could be more com- 
plete. The Sanskrit Aryans must, by their language 
and literature, have been at the time of their conquest 
in a fairly advanced stage of civilization. The Weddas 
are savages of a type than which it is scarcely possible 
to conceive anything more debased. Their language is 
limited to some few hundred vocables ; they cannot count 
beyond two or three ; they have, of course, no idea of 
letters ; they have in a domesticated condition no animal 
but the dog ; they have no arts beyond those of making 
bows and arrows, and constructing huts of a very rude 
kind ; they are said to have no idea of God, and scarcely 
any memory. They with difficulty obtain a subsistence 
by means of the bow, and are continually dwindling, 
and threaten to become extinct. " ( 4 k Origin of JSI ations,' ' 
pp. 6, 7.) 

In view of such facts as these — and many more of like 
character might be cited — the Duke of Argyll writes : 
"Nothing in the natural history of man can be more 
certain than that, both morally and intellectually and 
physically, he can, and he often does, sink from a higher 
to a lower level. This is true of man both collective- 
ly and individually, of men and of societies of men. 
Some regions of the world are strewn with monuments 
of civilizations which have passed away. Rude and 



PRIMEVAL MAN". 19 

barbarous tribes stare with wonder on the remains of 
temples, of which they cannot conceive the purpose, 
and of cities which are the dens of beasts." (" Primeval 
Man," p. 156.) And the venerable professor of ancient 
history at Oxford comes to the conclusion that " sav- 
agery and civilization are the two opposite poles of our 
social condition, states between which men oscillate 
freely, passing from either to the other with almost 
equal ease, according to the external circumstances 
wherewith they are surrounded." (" Origin of Na- 
tions," p. 8.) 

§ 8. True Significance of the " Ages" 

The several ages — as they are called — of stone, bronze, 
iron, and a higher civilization are not, nor have they 
ever been, ages in the progress of the human race as a 
whole, but only in that of particular peoples or nations — 
peoples in all these stages of progress living not only at 
the same time, but often side by side, as did the Eng- 
lish colonists, the Red Indians, and the Aztecs in this 
country two centuries ago. 

Nor does the passage of a particular people through 
one of these ages — the Stone Age, for example — neces- 
sarily require thousands of years. Where a savage 
people are brought in contact with a civilized one they 
may pass through all these " ages" in the course of a 
generation or two. Such has been the case with the 
civilized Indians, now quietly settled in our " Indian 
Territory." As Dr. Southall remarks, " The Stone 
Age is not necessarily associated with antiquity. It is a 
stage of civilization, and not a measure of time." 
(" Recent Origin of Man," p. 388.) 

Nor are these several ages always stages in the progress 
of a people. They may be stages in a course of degra- 



20 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

dation, as was the fact, according to Sir John Lubbock, 
with respect to the Stone Age, in which many tribes of 
our North American Indians were found living, at the 
first settlement of the country by Europeans. The Stone 
Age may mark the last stage in the decadence of a once 
highly civilized people, as well as the first stage in the 
advance of a savage people toward civilization. 

The assumption by the advocates of a great antiquity 
for man that our existing civilization is a result wrought 
out by the human race as a whole, through long ages, 
the general course being one of advance from utter sav- 
agery at its beginning, is irreconcilable with the known 
facts in the case. The question under examination can- 
not be settled by any general reasoning upon what is as- 
sumed to be the nature of man and the necessary prog- 
ress in civilization, nor can it be settled by a study of 
the existing condition of the nations of the earth, and 
their history for the few centuries which authentic history 
covers in the case of many of them. In seeking an 
answer to it, we must make use of written history, so 
far as that is available ; and when that fails us, we must 
turn to the " monuments" and tradition and every 
trace of himself of every kind which man has left behind 
him in the distant past. Geology, anthropology, and 
archaeology, as well as history, traditional, monumental, 
and written, have a right to be heard ; and to their testi- 
mony let us now turn our attention. The examination 
of each of these several kinds of testimony will be, neces- 
sarily, brief ; but not so brief, I hope, as to prevent 
our reaching a satisfactory conclusion. 



PRIMEVAL MAN". 21 

I. The Testimony of Science. 
§ 9. The Testimony of Geology. 

On one point the testimony of geology respecting 
primeval man is definite and unquestionable, and that 
is, that man is " the latest born " of the inhabitants of 
our earth. From the fauna to which he belongs more 
than one species of animal has disappeared, but, in so far 
as is known, not one has been added since he came into 
being. 

From time to time during the last half century the 
announcement has been made that human remains had 
been found in positions which demonstrated a much 
greater antiquity for man than had hitherto been allowed ; 
but in every instance a more careful examination has 
proved this claim to be unfounded. Among the most 
noted of these cases are the following — viz. : 

1. " The fossil man of Guadeloupe" for which JSTott 
and Gliddon, in their " Types of Mankind," published 
in 1854, claimed a great antiquity. " There were two 
of these skeletons, which were found imbedded in the 
solid rock on the northern coast of Guadeloupe, in the 
West Indies. One of these is in the British Museum, 
and the other in the Royal Cabinet in Paris. ... A 
careful study of them has led to the conclusion that they 
are the remains of Indians killed in battle not more than 
two centuries ago. The rock is a limestone, which is 
forming daily on that coast. . . . And the skeletons 
still retain some of their animal matter, and all their 
phosphate of lime." (Southall's " Recent Origin of 
Man," pp. 77, 78.) 

2. The fossil human hones found, as was reported, 



22 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

hy Count Pourtales, in the coral reefs of Florida, and 
which Professor L. Agassiz calculated to be ten thousand 
years old, basing his calculations upon what he consid- 
ered the rate of growth in coral reefs. Respecting this 
case, the American Naturalist, vol. 1, p. 434, contains 
the following statement : " In regard to the alleged dis- 
covery of human bones in the coral formation of Florida, 
which was first published by Professor Agassiz in !Nott 
and Gliddon's ' Types of Mankind,' and has appeared in 
other works, including Ly ell's l Antiquity of Man,' we 
beg to give our readers the following statement, in his 
own words, of Count L. F. Pourtales, the original discov- 
erer of these bones : ' The human jaw and other bones 
found in Florida by myself in 1848 were not in a coral 
formation, but in a fresh- water sandstone, on the shore of 
Lake Monroe, associated with fresh-water shells of species 
still living in the Lake (Paludina, Ampullaria, etc.). No 
date can be assigned to that deposit, at least from present 
observation.' " 

3. kC The Natchez man," as it was called — a human 
pelvis found in the bottom of a ravine cut through the 
fluviatile deposit at Natchez, Miss. , which Sir Charles 
Lyell estimated to have an age of one hundred thousand 
years. On this case I remark : (1) Professor C. G. 
Forshey, who subsequently examined the spot where this 
bone was found, says : "It was probably not in situ, but 
this loam and the bone too had caved in from some point 
above and been washed thither. A dozen plantation 
burial-places and Indian mounds and camps had been 
exposed above for centuries. The probabilities are a 
hundred to one that this bone was not of the bluff forma- 
tion. (2) The conclusion of Lyell respecting the age of 
this bone is based upon another conclusion of his, that 
the delta of the Mississippi has been one hundred thou- 



PRIMEVAL MAST. 23 

sand years in forming. Since I/yell's estimate more 
accurate observations on the rate of formation of the 
Mississippi delta have reduced the estimate of its age to 
fourteen thousand two hundred years, according to Pro- 
fessor Hitchcock, or four thousand four hundred, accord- 
ing to Majors Humphreys and Abbot, United States en- 
gineers, the latest authorities on the subject."* 

Such are three of the cases in which certain geologists 
thought for a time that they had obtained proof of a great 
antiquity for man — three among the most noted cases, 
and fair specimens, I think, of the whole class. In view 
of them all, my conclusion is that while geology dis- 
tinctly testifies that man is the " latest born" of the 
living creatures inhabiting our earth, it can tell us nothing 
definite about the time of his birth — certainly nothing at 
variance with the idea that he began his course on earth 
not more than six or seven thousand years ago. 

§ 10. The Testimony of Anthropology. 

At one time it was claimed that certain human skulls 
which had been discovered, and which from the position 
in which they were found were regarded as the skulls 

* In the Philadelphia Presbyterian of August 22d, 1885, I find the 
following: "Oftentimes we have reports that human remains have 
been discovered in some of the geological strata. Then we have fig- 
ured out for us how old the deposit is, and how old man must be, 
seeing that his remains are found so deeply buried in these forma- 
tions. Thousands and tens of thousands of years are claimed, and 
the great antiquity of man is declared to be demonstrated. The last 
discovery has been made in Mexico, and near the capitol. Human 
bones have been found in a stratum of travertine, and their antiquity 
has been argued." But Professor Newberry, of Columbia College, has 
weighed the reports, and says : " It is possible that we have in these 
bones the oldest record of man's occupation of the continent, but no 
facts have yet been brought to light which prove that the deposit 
containing them was not made within a thousand years." 



24 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

of paleolithic men — " the Neanderthall skull," for ex- 
ample — demonstrated a great difference between these 
men and the men of the present day, and so a much 
greater antiquity for man than had hitherto been allowed 
him. A more careful and extended examination has led 
anthropologists to a different conclusion. 

" The most ancient of all known human skulls," 
writes the Duke of Aygyll, " is so ample in its dimen- 
sions that it might have contained the brains of a philos- 
opher." So conclusive is this evidence against any 
change whatever in the specific characters of man since 
the oldest human being yet known was born, that Pro- 
fessor Huxley pronounces it to be clearly indicated that 
the first traces of the primordial stock whence man has 
proceeded need no longer be sought by those who en- 
tertain any form of the doctrine of progressive develop- 
ment in the newest tertiaries ; but lie adds they may 
be looked for in an epoch more distant from the age of 
those tertiaries than that it is from us." (" Primeval 
Man," pp. 73, 74.) In explanation of the remark of 
Professor Huxley, quoted above, I would remind the 
reader that " the newest tertiaries 1 ' are the oldest strata 
in which human remains have as yet been found. 

Professor Pfaff, of the University of Erlangen — the 
latest authority on this subject I have seen — after giving 
a tabular statement of the dimensions of a large number 
of very ancient skulls — paleolithic skulls, as they are 
called — collected in Great Britain and France,* reaches 
the conclusion : " We see very clearly from all this that 
the size of the brain of the oldest population known to 
us is not such as to permit us to place them on a lower 



* "As these skulls are partly fragmentary, "we shall best obtain 
figures adapted for the comparison of their contents by adding the 



PRIMEVAL MAN". 25 

level than that of the now living inhabitants of the 
earth." And, he subsequently adds, " The brain of 
the ape most like man does not amount to quite a third 
of the brain of the lowest race of men ; it is not half the 
size of the brain of a new-born child. The same gulf 
which is found to-day between man and the ape goes 
back with undiminished breadth and depth to the tertiary 
period." (" The Origin of Man," pp. 41, 51.) 

§ 11. The Testimony of Archceology. 

The testimony of archseology respecting primeval 
man comes from several different sources. 

1. That of the megalithie monuments and tumuli 
found in various parts of the world. One of the most 
celebrated of these megalithie monuments is that of 
Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plains, Eng. When and by 
whom was this erected ? By the Druids, probably, long 
ages before the conquest of Great Britain by the Romans, 
say some. Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his " History of 
Great Britain," written in the twelfth century- — and he 
is followed in this by all subsequent chroniclers — tells us 
that Ambrosius, the successor of Yortigern, erected 
Stonehenge as a monument to three hundred British 
noblemen treacherously slain by Hengist about a.d. 462. 
In confirmation of this date, we have the facts that 
some of the great stones are dressed evidently with 



measures for the height, breadth, and length of the skulls ; and so 
doing we obtain the following figures — viz. : 

Average of 48 skulls of the Stone Age from England . 18.877 in. 

Average of 7 skulls of the same age from Wales 18.858 in. 

Average of 36 skulls of the same age from France. . . .18.220 in. 

The average of the now living European is 18.579 in. 

The average of the now living Hottentot is 17.795 in. 

— " The Origin of Man," p. 41. 



26 NATURE AND REVELATION". 

bronze or iron tools, and that iron arrow-heads and 
pieces of iron armor, nearly eaten up with rust, have 
been dug up within its enclosure. 

Mr. James Fergusson, F.R.S., who has made this a 
special subject of study in his " Rude Stone Monu- 
ments," published in 1872, states as his conclusion that 
the " Cromlechs " of Great Britain and France belong 
to the first centuries of the Christian era, and states that 
three fourths of these monuments have yielded sepulchral 
deposits to the explorer, and, including the " tumuli," 
probably nine tenths have proved to be burial-places. 
For the tumuli, or u mounds," as they are more common- 
ly spoken of among us, of North and South America, no 
more ancient date can reasonably be claimed than for 
those of Europe. 

2. That of the remains of lake dwellings — i. e. , build- 
ings erected upon piles, which have been discovered in 
the course of the last thirty years in many of the lakes 
of Switzerland and adjacent countries. An age of six or 
seven thousand years has been claimed for these remains, 
chiefly on the ground of the rude stone implements 
found in them. 

In considering this claim I would ask you to remark 
the facts : (1) That mingled with these rude stone im- 
plements, others of bronze and iron occur, together 
with the remains of the horse, the ox, the goat, the 
sheep, and the dog, all domesticated animals ; and wheat, 
barley, and millet, in some instances roasted and stored 
up in jars, precisely as is now done in these same countries ; 
and, very recently, silver coins of the eighth and tenth 
centuries have been dredged up from the ruins of the 
lake-dwellings of Lake Paladru, in southern France ; 
(2) that pile-dwellings are delineated on Trajan's column 
at Eome. The date of this column is about a.d. 105, and 



PRIMEVAL MAN. 27 

it was erected to commemorate the conquest of Dacia, the 
modern Hungary. Such dwellings have been common 
in many countries in ages past, and are still in use in 
some, being resorted to for protection against the at- 
tacks of enemies, as in Ireland, as late as 1562, or to 
escape the periodic floods to which the country is sub- 
ject, as in Venezuela to-day. 

3. That of the Danish Kjolcken-moddings, or shell- 
mounds. A great antiquity is claimed for these shell 
mounds on the ground of the rude character of the stone 
implements found in them — metal implements being 
entirely wanting in many of them — and the presence of 
bones of animals now extinct. 

Shell-mounds similar in character to those of Denmark 
are to be found along the coast of many countries. On 
our own coast they are of frequent occurrence all the way 
from Nova Scotia to Florida. Those of our country are 
confessedly of Indian origin. Knowing the history of 
the early settlement of this country by Europeans, what 
would we naturally expect to find true respecting these 
shell-mounds which the Indians have left behind them ? 
I answer : (1) In the lower strata, or the older mounds, 
rude stone (paleolithic) implements alone ; (2) in the 
upper strata and the newer mounds, formed after the 
arrival of European settlers, the same rude stone imple- 
ments, mingled with copper ornaments and iron hatchets ; 
and this is just what we do find. Is it strange, then, 
that two thousand years ago, when the natives of Den- 
mark stood to the civilized Romans in very much the 
same relation that our Indians did to civilized Europeans 
two hundred and fifty years ago, that the same things 
should be found true of the shell-mounds they left be- 
hind them ? 

The truth is, " The whole argument which has been 



28 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

founded on flint implements, " as the Duke of Argyll 
well says, " is liable to these two fundamental objec- 
tions : (1) That flint implements are a very uncertain 
index of civilization, even among the tribes who use 
them ; and (2) that they are no index at all of the state 
of civilization of other tribes who lived at the same 
time in other portions of the globe. The finding of flint 
implements, for example, however rude, in England or 
Denmark or France, affords no evidence whatever of 
the condition of the industrial arts in the same age upon 
the banks of the Euphrates or the Nile." (" Primeval 
Man," p. 184.) 

4. That *of the "bone-cams" of Europe, in which 
the bones of man are found mingled with those of the 
cave-bear, the cave-hyena, the mammoth, the woolly 
elephant, the hippopotamus, and the reindeer — animals 
now extinct, or else no longer inhabitants of the coun- 
tries in which these caves occur. 

If man was the contemporary of these animals — and 
the mingling of his bones with theirs in the same caves 
would seem to place this beyond reasonable doubt — the 
question presents itself, How long ago is it that these 
animals inhabited Central Europe ? and when did they 
cease to exist, if they have disappeared altogether ? (1) 
The cave-bear and cave-hyena, once thought to be ex- 
tinct species of these animals, and so very ancient, more 
careful examination has shown to be identical with the 
species now living ; (2) the reindeer, now confined to 
Northern Europe, Ceesar and Sallust both tell us, was 
common in Gaul (France) and Germany in their day ; 
(3) the remains of the woolly elephant occur in great 
abundance in Siberia, in some instances with the flesh in 
such a condition as to be eaten by dogs ; (4) the remains 
of the mammoth are found in surface deposits and peat 



PEIMEVAL MAN". 29 

swamps — e.g., in the Dismal Swamp of Yirginia — with 
the bones retaining a large portion of their animal matter, 
thus proving their comparatively recent extinction. In 
confirmation of this, in the " Smithsonian Contributions 
to Knowledge," vol. 3, p. 142, we are told that among 
the [North American Indians there are native legends 
which indicate a traditional knowledge of more than one 
of these extinct animals, among them the mastodon or 
mammoth. J^ow, whether we do or do not adopt the 
supposition of Dr. Southall, that these human bones found 
in the bone-caves of Europe are those of " the first race 
which reached Western Europe from Western Asia, and 
were subsequently pushed further north by the Celts," 
this much, I think, is certainly true, that there is nothing 
in the known facts of the case which demands for them 
an antiquity greater than four thousand or live thousand 
years. 

§ 12. Conclusion from the Testimony of Science. 

The reader has now before him a statement of all the 
important facts of geology, anthropology, and archseol- 
ogy bearing upon the question of primeval man. It 
is brief, but I have tried to make it a fair statement. 
To any who may wish to pursue the subject further, I 
would recommend Dr. James C. Southall's " Recent 
Origin of Man," a work which contains the most full 
and thorough discussion of the whole subject I know of 
in the English language. This testimony of science 
does not settle the question respecting the age and condi- 
tion of primeval man ; and certainly it furnishes no 
authority for such statements as that of Clodd — " Man 
was once wild and rough and savage, frightened at his 
own shadow, and still more frightened at the roar of the 
thunder and the quiver of the lightning, which he 



30 NATURE AND REVELATION". 

thought were the clappings of the wings and the flash- 
ings of the eyes of the angry Spirit, as he came flying 
from the sun ; and that it has taken many thousands of 
years for man to become as wise and skilful as we now 
see him." (Clodd's " Childhood of the World," p. 2.) 



II. The Testimony of History. 
§ 13. " The Cradle of the Human Bace." 

The unity of the human race, a point respecting 
which there was at one time much difference of opinion, 
may now be regarded as a settled question. Professor 
Huxley writes : "I cannot see any good ground what- 
ever, or even any tenable sort of evidence, for believing 
that there is more than one species of man." ( u Origin 
of Species," Lecture V.) And the Duke of Argyll: 
" On this point, therefore, of the unity of man's origin, 
those who bow to the authority of the most ancient and 
the most venerable traditions, and those who accept the 
most imposing and the most popular of modern scientific 
theories, are found standing on common ground, and 
accepting the same result." ("Unity of Nature," 
p. 399.) 

Where did the human race begin its course ? On 
this point, as well as that of the unity of the race, 
scholars are pretty well agreed. 

The country known to us, in part, as Armenia — the 
elevated region in which the Euphrates, the Tigris, and 
the Indus have their head-waters — is regarded as the 
cradle of the human race ; and this, among other rea- 
sons, because the most ancient traditions all point to 
this as man's starting-point, because this is the native 
country of the cereals which have furnished food for man 



PRIMEVAL MAN. 31 

the world over, and because ethnological investigations 
all lead to the same conclusion. It is here, and cluster- 
ing around this as a centre, we find the oldest nations, 
the only ones that have a history reaching back into the 
long past — e.g., the Chinese, the Indians, the Persians, 
the Assyrians, the Jews, the Phoenicians, the Greeks, 
and the Egyptians. 

§ 14. The Antiquity of the Nations of Western Asia. 

It would be impossible within the limits of a brief dis- 
cussion like this to give any statement in detail of the 
claims to antiquity of these several peoples. Instead 
thereof I will ask the reader's attention to the conclusions 
of Canon Rawlinson, stated at large, with his reasons for 
them, in his " Seven Great Monarchies," and, in brief, 
in his later work, " The Origin of. Nations." He writes : 
" Exaggerated chronologies are common to a large 
number of nations ; but critical examination has — at any 
rate, in all cases but one — demonstrated their fallacy ; 
and the many myriads of years postulated for their past 
civilization and history by the Babylonians and Assyrians, 
the Hindoos, the Chinese, and others, has been shown to 
be purely fiction, utterly unworthy of belief, and not 
even requiring any very elaborate refutation. Cuneiform 
scholars confidently place the beginning of Babylon 
about b.c. 2300 ; of Assyria, about b.c. 1500 ; of India, 
about b.c. 1200. Chinese investigators can find nothing 
solid or substantial in the past of the " Celestials" earlier 
than b.c. 781, or, at the farthest, b.c 1154. For Phoenicia 
the date assigned by the latest English investigator is six- 
teen or seventeen centuries b.c. . . . A concensus of 
savants and scholars almost unparalleled limits the past 
history of civilized man to a date removed from our own 
time by less than four thousand four hundred years, ex- 



32 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

cepting in a single instance. There remains one coun- 
try, one civilization, with respect to which the learned 
are at variance, there being writers of high repute who 
place the dawn of Egyptian civilization about b.c. 2700, 
or only four centuries before that of Babylon, while there 
are others who postulate for it an antiquity exceeding 
this about two thousand four hundred years. " (" Origin 
of Nations," pp. 147-149.) 

§ 15. The Antiquity of .Egypt. 

On what is this claim for so great antiquity for 
Egyptian civilization based ? Not on any direct monu- 
mental testimony, although certain writers speak as if 
it was upon such testimony, at least in part, the claim 
rested. On this point Rawlinson writes : " Nothing is 
more certain, nothing more universally admitted by 
Egyptologists, than the absence from the monuments of 
any continued chronology." ' (" Origin of Nations," 
p. 152.) And in support of this statement he quotes the 
authority of some of the most eminent scholars of the 
day.* 

Professor Owen, the ablest advocate of the great an- 
tiquity of Egyptian civilization, rests its claim to accept- 
ance mainly on the testimony of Manetho, an Egyptian 



* Stuart Pool says the evidence of the monuments with regard 
to chronology is neither full nor explicit. (" Dictionary of the Bible," 
vol. 1, p. 505.) Bunsen : " History is not to be elicited from the mon- 
uments ; not even its framework, chronology." ("Egypt's Place," 
vol. 1, p. 32.) Brugsch : " It is not till the commencement of the 
twenty-sixth dynasty that the chronology is founded upon dates not 
much wanting in exactness." (" Histoire d'Egypt," p. 25.) Mariette 
and Lenormant : "The greatest obstacle to the establishment of a 
regular Egyptian chronology is the circumstance that the Egyptians 
themselves never had any chronology at all." (" Manuel d 'Histoire 
Ancienne," vol. 1, p. 332 ; Kawlinson's " Origin of Nations," p. 152.) 



PRIMEVAL MAN". 33 

priest who lived and wrote near tlie middle of the third 
century before Christ. Unfortunately for us, the original 
' ' History of Egypt," by Manetho, has been lost, and 
we have nothing more than fragments of it, preserved in 
the writings of Eusebius and Sincellus, together with a 
few quotations by Josephus. 

Respecting Manetho's dynasties of Egyptian kings, it 
is worthy of remark : (1) That the earliest dynasties are 
rejected by all as fabulous. Of this character are his 
dynasties of the gods, covering a period of thirteen 
thousand nine hundred* years, and those of the Manes and 
Heroes, covering five thousand eight hundred and thir- 
teen years more ; and so the antiquity of Egyptian civil- 
ization, as given by Manetho, is curtailed nearly twenty 
thousand years by common consent. (2) The state- 
ments of Eusebius and Sincellus, each professing to give 
Manetho's numbers, often differ as to the length of the 
same dynasty, admitted to be genuine, in one instance 
as much as three hundred years. (3) Manetho states that 
Egypt, throughout a large part of its history, was divided 
into three kingdoms : Upper, Middle, and Lower Egypt ; 
and there is abundant proof from other quarters that 
such was the fact ; and, if so, it seems fair to conclude 
that some of his dynasties were contemporary. As to 
which, and how many of them were contemporary, 
Egyptologists are not agreed. In view of all these facts, 
it must be admitted that anything like a definite deter- 
mination of the antiquity of Egyptian civilization, on 
the authority of Manetho's dynasties, is out of the 
question. 

Can we get any light on this perplexing question from 
the monuments ? A peculiarity in the construction of 
the Great Pyramid, confessedly one of the oldest, if not 
the very oldest, of Egyptian monuments, is thought by 



34 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

some to give us the date of its erection. This pyramid 
is admirably oriented, and, of course, one of its sides 
faces due north. In this north side is the entrance, 
the long entrance passage being in the exact plane of 
the meridian — not horizontal — not pointing to the true 
pole, which would require an elevation of 30°, the lati- 
tude of the pyramid, but at an angle of 26° 27', accord- 
ing to the careful determination of Piazzi Smith, Astron- 
omer Koyal of Scotland. Colonel Howard Yise, who, 
forty-five years ago, spent months in the study of this 
pyramid, was impressed with this peculiarity, and think- 
ing it possible that this passage pointed to what was the 
pole-star at the time of its erection, he communicated 
this idea to Sir John Ilerschel, with the request that he 
would determine for him whether or not there ever was 
a pole-star which occupied just the position indicated, 
and which might have served as a guide to the pyramid- 
builders ; and if there was, what star ? and when did 
it occupy that position ? As changes in the pole-star 
are dependent upon the " precession of the equinoxes," 
and the rate of that precession has been determined, 
these questions were not difficult to answer. Sir John 
Herschel determined that the star Alpha Draconis, one 
of the brightest stars in the northern circumpolar re- 
gions, was once pole-star, and occupied the very posi- 
tion indicated at two points in the past — viz., b.c. 2123 
and b.c. 3400. For reasons which it is not necessary I 
should state here, the first of these dates was accepted 
by Colonel Yise ; and for a time the date of the erection 
of the Great Pyramid was generally considered settled ; 
and, for myself, I must say I have seen no good reason 
given for setting aside this settlement. This pyramid, 
as the quarry-marks upon many of its blocks of stone 
show, was built during the reign of Cheops ; and, ac- 



PRIMEVAL MAR. 35 

cording to Manetlio's dynasties, not more than two or 
three centuries could have intervened between Cheops' 
reign and that of Menes, universally regarded as the 
founder of the Egyptian 'monarchy. Thus, in the date 
of the building of the Great Pyramid we have Canon 
Eawlinson's determination of the antiquity of Egyptian 
civilization — viz., about b.c. 2600 years — strikingly con- 
firmed. 

The pyramid period falls very early in Egyptian his- 
tory, and yet its civilization would seem to have been 
as perfect as at any later period. Sir G. Wilkinson 
writes : " The scenes depicted in the tombs of this epoch 
show that the Egyptians had already the same arts and 
habits as in after times, and the hieroglyphics in the 
Great Pyramid prove that writing had been long in use. 
We see no primitive mode of life in Egypt, no barbar- 
ous customs, not even the habit, so slowly abandoned by 
all people, of wearing arms when not on military service, 
nor any archaic art." (Eawlinson's " Herodotus," vol. 
2, p. 291.) If to all this we add the architectural skill 
exhibited in fixing the casing stones of the pyramid, 
and in polishing the marble linings of the several pas- 
sages, and, more especially, the red granite linings of 
what is called the King's Chamber, we cannot but form a 
high idea of Egyptian civilization at that period. In 
view of such facts as these, M. Renan exclaims : " When 
we think of this civilization, that it had no known in- 
fancy ; that this art, of which there remain innumerable 
monuments, had no archaic period ; that the Egypt of 
Cheops and Cephron is superior, in a sense, to all that 
followed, on est jpris de vertige." (Quoted in Smith's 
" Great Pyramid," vol. 3, p. 371.) 

Admitting the truth of all that has been said about the 
advanced civilization of the Pyramid period, and that 



36 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

we cannot, on the authority of authentic history, carry 
back its date much further than Canon Rawlinson has 
done, Professor Owen contends for the addition of some 
two thousand years, on the ground that " sober experi- 
ence teaches that arts, language, and literature are of slow 
growth, the result of gradual development ; . . . that of 
all the marvels of this history, the manifestation of the 
dawn of civilization by such works, agreeably with the 
conceptions of Canon Rawlinson, would be the greatest. 
The birth of Pallas from the brain of Jove would be 
its parallel." (Appendix to the " Origin of Nations," 
p. 259.) This argument of Professor Owen — and I have 
given it in his own words — is simply a " begging of the 
question " at issue. A parallel to the birth of Pallas 
from the brain of Jove is. just what those who hold that 
the human race began its course in a civilized condition 
contend for. As to the civilization of Egypt, they hold 
that the Egyptians were not autochthanes, nor did their 
civilization dawn in the Valley of the Kile. Like the 
Anglo-Saxon race in our own country, they were im- 
migrants, the offshoot of a civilized people, and in their 
settlement of Egypt they brought with them the civili- 
zation of the country from which they came, as our fore- 
fathers did. 

This view of matters is confirmed by all we know of 
the history of their religion. Piazzi Smith tells us that 
" the pyramids generally are without idolatrous decora- 
tions or contents." (" The Great Pyramid," vol. 3, 
p. 518.) A very remarkable fact is this, when their later 
built temples and tombs are more thickly covered with 
marks of idolatry than those of any other people. M. 
Penouf writes : " It is incontestably true that the sub- 
limest portions of the Egyptian religion are not the com- 
paratively late results of a process of development or 



PRIMEVAL MA2*. 37 

elimination from the grosser. The sublimest portions are 
demonstrably ancient ; and the last stage of the Egyptian 
religion — that known to the Greek and Latin writers — 
was by far the grossest and most corrupt." (" Hibbert 
Lectures," p. 119.) 

By means of authentic records, written and monu- 
mental, we have traced back the history of man about 
four thousand five hundred years. Beyond this date we 
have certain traditions, more or less universal, that fur- 
nish some light to guide us. To three of these — the 
three most ancient — we will now turn our attention. 

§ 16. Tradition Respecting the Confusion of Tongues. 

This story of the " Tower of Tongues," writes 
Lenormant, " was among the most ancient recollections 
of the Chaldeans, and was one of the national traditions 
of the Armenians, who had received it from the civilized 
nations inhabiting the Tigro -Euphrates basin. ' ' (' 'Ancient 
History of the East," p. 22.) 

Berosus gives the tradition in the following form — viz. : 
*."They say that the first inhabitants of the earth, 
glorying in their own strength and size, and despising 
the gods, undertook to raise a tower whose top should 
reach the sky, in the place in which Babylon now stands ; 
but when it approached the heavens, the winds assisted 
the gods, and overthrew the work upon its contrivers, 
and its ruins are said to be still in Babylon ; and the 
gods introduced a diversity of tongues among men, who 
till that time had all spoken the same language ; and a 
war arose between Chronus and Titan. The place in 
which they built the tower is now called Babylon, on 
account of the confusion of tongues, for confusion is by 
the Hebrews called Babel." (Cory's " Ancient Frag- 
ments," p. 34.) This tradition in an earlier form has 



38 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

recently been discovered inscribed on one of the Assyrian 
tablets in the British Museum, and a translation of it 
is given in " The Eecords of the Past," vol. 7, pp. 
129-132, 

§ 17. Tradition of the Flood. 

" The one tradition," writes Lenormant, " which is 
really universal among those bearing on the history 
of primeval man, is that of the deluge. ... Of all 
traditions relative to the deluge, by far the most curious 
is that of the Chaldeans, made known to the Greeks by 
Berosus." (" Ancient History of the East," pp. 13,14.) 

This tradition, as given by Berosus, is as follows — viz.: 
" In the time of Xisuthrus happened a great deluge, the 
history of which is thus described : The deity Chronus 
appeared to him in a vision, and warned him that upon 
the 15th day of the month Sivan there would be a flood 
by which mankind would be destroyed. He therefore 
enjoined him to write a history of the beginning, pro- 
cedure, and course of all things, and to bury it in the City 
of the Sun at Sippora, and to build a vessel, and to take 
with him into it his friends and relations, and convey on 
board everything necessary to sustain life, together with 
all the different animals, both birds and quadrupeds, and 
to trust himself fearlessly to the deep. Having asked 
the deity whither he was to sail, he was answered, ' To 
the gods ; ' upon which he offered up a prayer for the 
good of mankind. He then built a vessel five stadia in 
length and two in breadth. Into this he put every- 
thing he had prepared, and last of all conveyed into it 
his wife, his children, and his friends. After the flood 
had been upon the earth, and was in time abated, 
Xisuthrus sent out birds from the vessel, which, not find- 
ing any food, nor any place whereupon they might rest 
their feet, returned to him again. After an interval of 



PRIMEVAL MAI*. 39 

some days lie sent them forth a second time, and they 
now returned with their feet tinged with mud. lie 
made a trial the third time with these birds, but they 
returned no more, from whence he judged that the sur- 
face of the earth had appeared above the waters. He 
therefore made an opening in the vessel, and upon look- 
ing out found that it was stranded upon the side of some 
mountain, upon which he immediately quitted it, with 
his wife, his daughter, and the pilot. Xisuthrus then 
paid his adoration to the earth ; and having constructed 
an altar, offered sacrifice to the gods." (Cory's " An- 
cient Fragments," p. 26.) This tradition in an ear- 
lier form, like that of the " Tower of Tongues," has re- 
cently been discovered among the Assyrian tablets in 
the British Museum, and a translation of it is given in 
" The Eecords of the Past," vol. 7, pp. 133-149. 

§ 18. Tradition of a Golden Age. 

" The traditions of almost all nations," writes Canon 
Eawlinson, " place at the beginning of human history a 
time of happiness and perfection, ' a golden age,' which 
has no features of savagery or barbarism, but many of 
civilization and refinement. In the Zendavesta, the first 
Assyrian king, after reigning for a time in the original 
Aryanem vaejo, removes with his subjects to a secluded 
spot, where both he and they enjoy uninterrupted hap- 
piness. In this place was neither overbearing nor mean- 
spiritedness, neither stupidity nor violence, neither 
poverty nor deceit, neither puniness nor deformity, 
neither huge teeth nor bodies beyond the usual measure. 
The inhabitants suffered no defilement from the evil 
spirit. They dwelt amid odoriferous trees and golden 
pillars ; their cattle were the largest, best, and most 
beautiful on earth ; they were themselves a tall and beau- 



40 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

tiful race ; their food was ambrosial, and never failed 
them." (" Origin of Nations," p. 11.) 

The Egyptian dynasties, according to Manetho, com- 
menced with a reign of the gods, which lasted for thir- 
teen thousand nine hundred years ; and it would be in 
violation of all our notions of the fit and the proper to 
think of the gods as reigning over a race of savages — 
over any other than a happy people. The Chinese his- 
torians tell of an age of innocence, when the whole crea- 
tion enjoyed a state of happiness ; when everything was 
good, all being perfect in their kind. " The Greeks and 
Eomans believed in a golden age under the rule of 
Saturn ; and many of their poets — as, for example, 
Hesiod, in his ' Works and Days,' Aratus, Ovid, and, 
above all, Virgil, in the first book of the Georgics — ■ 
have turned this poetic material to admirable account, 
and defined the gradual decadence of the world, as the 
silver, the brass, and the iron ages, holding out at the 
same time the consolatory hope that the pristine state 
of things will one day return." (Chambers's Encyclo- 
paedia, art. Golden Age.) 

As already remarked, in the light of authentic history, 
written and monumental, we can trace back the history 
of man some four thousand five hundred years ; and, I 
now add, under the guidance of tradition we can go 
back, possibly, one thousand or two thousand years more ; 
and there we seem to reach his beginning, to come upon 
primeval man as he is starting upon his course ;* and we 



* In Pusey's "Daniel," recently republished in this country, I 
find the following statement — viz.: "The known population of the 
world is much what it would be, according to recognized rules of the 
increase of our race, dating from the received chronology of Noah, 
and starting with six persons. Bough as such calculations must be, 
they wholly exclude the fabulous unbroken antiquity which some 



PRIMEVAL MAN". 41 

find him, not the ignorant, brutal savage, destitute of 
all religion, which some would have us believe primeval 
man to have been, but man enjoying his golden age, 
under the immediate government of the gods, and in 
happy communion with them ; and true science testifies 
to nothing at variance with this. I may be told that 
this conclusion is out of harmony with the hypothesis of 
the evolution of man from the brute. If this be so, all I 
have to say is, the worse, then, for the hypothesis of evo- 
lution. At best "' an unproved hypothesis," to use the 
words of Virchow, it cannot be accounted an integral 
part of true science. True science is' built up of facts, 
not fancies. 

III. The Testimony of Moses. 

§ 19. Manet ho, Berosus, and Moses Compared. 

Thus far we have sought to answer the questions, 
When % And in what condition did the human race 
begin its course ? — from sources admitted by all to be 
worthy of credit, and to which all are accustomed to 
refer when discussing this subject. 1 have purposely 
said nothing of that wonderful ancient history preserved 
for us by the Jews, which claims to have been written 
more than a thousand years before Manetho or Berosus 
was born — the Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses. 



claim for the human race." And in a note he adds: "It is calcu- 
lated by M. Faa de Bruns, one of the most distinguished scholars of 
Cauchy, now Professor at Turin, that, starting from the received 
chronology of the flood, b.c. 2348, and taking as the annual in- 
crease 2 -| T , a number not far from that which represents the annual 
increase of the population of France, you would light on the net 
number of the population of the earth, 1,400,000,000." (Pusey's 
"Daniel," preface, p. xv.) 



42 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

The testimony of Moses is studiously ignored by most 
of those who contend for a great antiquity and a savage 
origin for man ; and if I should attempt to state their 
objection to him, just as I believe it lies in their own 
minds, I would do it in some such words as these : 
Moses was a priest, and the Pentateuch was written in 
the interest of the religion which he taught ; and priest- 
craft, whether it presents itself in the form of duties en- 
joined or lessons taught, is not to be trusted. 

" Moses was a priest." This is not the exact truth ; 
his brother Aaron was the priest ; but let that pass. 
And who was Berosus ? A priest. And he tells us 
expressly that the substance of his history was derived 
from the temple records of Babylon. And who was 
Manetho ? A priest. And he too professes to derive 
his information from the temple records and priestly tra- 
ditions of Egypt. If, then, we accept the testimony of 
the two priests — Berosus and Manetho — how can we, with 
any show of reason, reject that of Moses on the ground of 
his priestly character ? The truth is, in those early ages 
in the East, as in Great Britain five hundred years ago, 
education was almost entirely confined to the priesthood. 
Sir Walter Scott is true to history when he makes a lead- 
ing nobleman of Scotland of that age say : 

"At first in heart it liked me ill, 
When the King praised his clerkly skill ; 
Thanks to St. Botan, son of mine 
Save Gowan, ne'er could pen a line." 

It would be just as reasonable to discredit the histories 
of the Venerable Bede, or Lingard, because of the priest- 
ly character of their authors, as to discredit the writings 
of Berosus or Manetho or Moses on such grounds. 

" Moses wrote in the interest of religion, and the Pen- 
tateuch has a religious tone throughout." True; and 



PRIMEVAL MAN. 43 

the same is true of the writings of Manetho and Berosus. 
Of Manetho's writings we have but little besides his 
" Dynasties of the Kings of Egypt ;" but this begins with 
"the reign of the gods." Of the religious tone of the 
writings of Berosus, the traditions which he has pre- 
served for us of the " Tower of Tongues," and " The 
Flood," already quoted, furnish an illustration. The 
cuneiform inscriptions of the Tigro-Euphrates valley, the 
only writings of an antiquity approaching that of the 
Pentateuch, are all profoundly religious in their tone. 
As a proof of this, take a brief extract from the celebrated 
Behistun inscription, as translated by OpperC " And 
Darius the king says : These are the princes which call 
themselves mine. By the grace of Ormazd, to me they 
made subjection, brought tribute to me, what was ordered 
by me unto them, in the night-time as well as in the day- 
time, that they executed. And Darius the king says : In 
these provinces the man who was my friend I cherished 
him ; the man who was my enemy I punished him 
thoroughly. By the grace of Ormazd, in these lands was 
my law observed ; and what was ordered by me unto 
them, that they executed. And Darius the king says : 
Ormazd gave to me this kingdom, and Ormazd was my 
helper until I gained this kingdom, and by the grace of 
Ormazd I possess this kingdom." ( u Records of the 
Past," vol. 7, pp. 88, 89.) 

In the thoroughly religious tone of their writings, 
Manetho, Berosus, Moses, and the cuneiform inscriptions 
are all alike, the only difference being that the religion 
which appears in Moses' writings is a religion of a con- 
fessedly higher type — inasmuch as it recognizes one 
God only — than the Egyptian animal worship of Manetho 
or the Parseeism of Nineveh and Babylon. Did the Pen- 
tateuch lack this religious tone, it would be out of har- 



44 NATURE ASTD REVELATION. 

mony with all other writings of the age in which it claims 
to have been written ; and to object to it on this ground 
simply exposes the ignorance of the objector. 

In addition to this, 1 would ask you to notice the facts : 
(1) That we have the original work of Moses in the 
language in which it was first written, as well as in several 
ancient translations, preserved with religious care by the 
Jews ; while of the writings of Manetho and Berosus we 
have but fragments, preserved by later writers. (2) That 
the Pentateuch is, in large measure, a record of what 
took place in Moses' day — is contemporary history — 
while the histories of Manetho and Berosus, who lived 
during the third century before Christ, are altogether 
histories of what must have been to them the long-passed. 
If they had tradition and the temple records to help 
them, so had Moses tradition, and, as is inferred from a 
critical examination of his writings by our ablest scholars, 
certain written documents, which had come down to him 
from an earlier age. Possibly it is to these documents 
the Chaldean tradition of the Deluge refers, when it tells 
us that " the Deity appeared to Xisuthrus (the Noah of 
Moses), and enjoined him to write a history of the begin- 
ning, the procedure, and course of all things," and to 
take measures to preserve it for the instruction of after 
ages. (3) If the writings of Manetho and Berosus are 
confirmed at many points by the monuments of Egypt and 
the Tigro-Euphrates valley, so are the writings of Moses,* 
and, in one particular — in the greatest event in the 
history of Israel which it records — the Exodus from 



* The reader who wishes to follow up this subject can consult 
Hengstenberg's "Egypt and the Books of Moses," and Kawlin- 
son's "Egypt and Babylon." 



PRIMEVAL MAN". 45 

Egyptian bondage — the history of Moses is confirmed in 
a way in which no other ancient history is. In com- 
memoration of that event, and of the means by whicli 
the pride of Egypt was broken and Israel set free, a 
solemn feast was instituted — the Passover — which is 
observed by the Jews to-day, scattered though they be 
all over the world, and which has been observed by them 
from the ' day of its institution — a monument this, 
standing forth amid the ages solitary and alone, as last- 
ing as the pyramids and more certain in its testimony ; 
for while the purpose for which the Great Pyramid was 
erected is a matter in dispute among the learned, but 
one interpretation has ever been given to the Passover, 
the presiding officer at the feast to-day repeating, as he 
did three thousand five hundred years ago — " It is the 
sacrifice of the Lord's Passover, who passed over the 
houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote 
the Egyptians, and delivered our houses." (Exodus 
12 : 27.) 

In view of such facts as these, I ask, How can we, 
with any show of reason, accept the writings of Manetho 
and Berosus as credible and reject those of Moses ? 1 
have said nothing of Moses' claim to inspiration, nor do 
I mean on the present occasion to. advance that claim. 1 
wish to discuss the question before us on grounds ad- 
mitted by all to be legitimate. All I claim for Moses is, 
that he shall be treated fairly — treated just as Manetho. 
and Berosus are, and so treated, 1 believe his claim to 
credibility can be more satisfactorily established than 
that of any other ancient historian whose writings have 
come down to us ; and so, in the words of Lenormant, 
" They should, in sound criticism, form the basis of all 
history." (" Manual of Ancient History," p. 1.) 



46 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

§ 20. Further Proof of the Credibility of the Pentateuch. 

Taking the Pentateuch as our guide, at the point at 
which all other written history fails us, we will be able 
to trace back the race of man to its beginning. As we 
start in this attempt, I will ask you to remark that : 

(1) At the point at which we start, Moses' history is in 
perfect harmony with all other credible histories in the 
representation which it gives of the then existing state of 
things. There are great civilized nations dwelling in the 
Tigro-Euphrates and Nile valleys, their people living 
in walled cities, as well as in the open country, and 
carrying on trade, and making wars one with another ; 
that emigration is going on, and has been going on for 
years, from the great centres of population, and so 
Egypt and Chaldea are surrounded by lesser tribes, who, 
under the influence of their less favorable environments, 
have lost something of the civilization they once pos- 
sessed ; and that a gross idolatry seems to be supplant- 
ing the purer worship of one God which had prevailed, 
notably in Egypt. 

(2) As we proceed back to the beginning, with Moses' 
writings in our hands, we gather up and incorporate into 
a history which possesses philosophic unity all the frag- 
ments preserved in the most ancient traditions, such as 
"the Tower of Tongues," "the Deluge," and "the 
Golden Age." Lenormant writes: "The Pentateuch 
contains the most ancient tradition as to the first days of 
the human race, the only one which has not been dis- 
figured by the introduction of fantastic myths of dis- 
ordered imaginations ran wild. The chief features of 
that tradition, which was originally common to all man- 
kind, and which the special care of Providence has pre- 
served in greater purity among the chosen people than 



PRIMEVAL MAN". 47 

among other races, are preserved, though changed, in 
countries distant from each other, and whose inhabitants 
have had no communication for thousands of years. The 
only clew which can guide us through the labyrinth of 
these scattered fragments of tradition is the Bible." 
(" Manual of Ancient History," p. 1.) 

§ 21. Civilization of Primeval Man according to the 
Pentateuch. 

The condition of primeval man is described by Moses 
in the words — " God created man in His own image, in 
the image of God created He him ; male and female 
created He them." (Gen. 1 : 27.) " And the Lord God 
planted a garden eastward in Eden ; and there He put 
the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground 
made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant 
to the sight, and good for food. And the Lord God took 
the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress 
it and to keep it." (Gen. 2 : 8, 9, 15.) " And Adam 
gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and 
to every beast of the field. And . . . the Lord God . . . 
brought the woman unto the man. And Adam said, 
This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh : she 
shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of 
man. Therefore shall a man leave father and mother, 
and shall cleave unto his wife : and they shall be one 
flesh." (Gen. 2 : 20, 22-21.) " And God blessed them, 
and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and 
replenish the earth, and subdue it : and have dominion 
over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, 
and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." 
(Gen. 1 : 28.) 

The sketch thus given us of primeval man is a sketch 
in outline only, but it is complete enough to place 



48 NATURE AND REVELATION - . 

beyond all reasonable question the fact that he was no 
savage, just emerging as to body and mind from the con- 
dition of a brute, living in damp caves, and feeding upon 
the raw flesh of such animals as he was able to entrap or 
master in open fight — " the cave man," as he has been 
called. The nearest approach to such a man our world 
has presented is the Patagonian, and that in these closing 
years of this nineteenth century. Primeval man, as 
depicted by Moses, is a being bearing the image of 
God ; cultivating the fruitful earth which, in response to 
his labor, yielded an abundant return of all that was good 
for food ; possessed of a language copious enough to give 
name to every living thing ; subduing the earth, and hav- 
ing the marriage relation established in all the sacredness 
which belongs to it among the most civilized nations of 
oar day — a most significant particular in Moses' sketch, 
when we consider that " one of the most general charac- 
teristics of the savage is to despise and degrade the female 
sex." (Malthus on " Population," vol. 1, p. 39.) 

All these things, I may be told, do not constitute 
civilization, in the accepted signification of that word. 
An extended knowledge of the useful arts, and the pos- 
session of such a settled system of laws and government 
as enable men to live in great political communities, are 
essential features of civilization. This is true of civil- 
ization as the term is applied to peoples and nations, and 
in this sense civilization was impossible for man at the 
commencement of his course, impossible until he had 
multiplied greatly in the earth, impossible for a century 
or two. Such a civilization in its living germ is all that 
can possibly be predicated of primeval man ; and in the 
particulars which Moses has given us, we have this 
civilization in its living germ, and that a civilization of 
a higher type than that of Egypt, with her pyramids and 



PRIMEVAL MAN". 49 

temples, built by slaves working under the lash of their 
taskmasters ; or that of Rome, with her triumphal 
arches adorned with sculptures of chained captives, and 
her colosseum erected for popular shows of mortal com- 
bat between gladiators and wild beasts. 

§ 22. Religion of Primeval Man according to the 
Pentateuch. 

Turning now to what the Pentateuch tells us of the 
religion of primeval man, I will direct your attention 
to one passage only — " And in process of time it came 
to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an 
offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of 
the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof. And 
the Lord had respect unto Abel and unto his offering. 
But unto Cain and his offering he had not respect." 
(Gen. 4 : 3-5.) As throwing light upon the signifi- 
cance of this passage, one of the most learned of the Jews 
wrote eighteen hundred years ago : " By faith Abel 
offered unto God a more acceptablesacrifi.ee than Cain." 
We have here, then, Abel by bloody sacrifice, which he 
offered in faith, the representative of what is distinctively 
styled " evangelical religion ;" and Cain, by his offering 
the fruit of the ground, the representative of what is dis- 
tinctively styled ''natural religion;" neither of them 
the religion of the savage, but the two great phases of 
religious thought and belief common among the most 
highly civilized peoples of our day. 

Canon Rawlinson, in the "concluding remarks" of 
his " Religions of the Ancient World," writes : " The 
historic review which has been here made lends no sup- 
port to the theory that there is a uniform growth and 
progress of religions from fetishism to polytheism, from 
polytheism to monotheism, and from monotheism to posi- 



50 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

tivism, as maintained by the followers of Comte. None 
of the religions here described shows any signs of having 
been developed out of fetishism, unless it be the Shaman- 
ism of the Etruscans. In most of them the monotheistic 
idea is most prominent at the first, and gradually becomes 
obscured, and gives way before a polytheistic corruption. 
In all there is one element, at least, which appears to be 
traditional — viz. , sacrifice, for it can scarcely have been by 
the exercise of his reason that man came so generally to 
believe that the superior powers, whatever they were, 
would be pleased by the violent death of one or more of 
their creatures." 

" Altogether, the theory to which the facts appear on 
the whole to point is the existence of a primitive religion, 
communicated to man from without, whereof Monothe- 
ism and expiatory sacrifice were parts, and the gradual 
clouding over of this primitive revelation everywhere, 
unless it were among the Hebrews. Even among them 
a worship of Teraphim crept in (Gren. 31 : 19-35), 
together with other corruptions (Josh. 24 : 11) ; and 
the terrors of Sinai were needed to clear away poly- 
theistic accretions. Elsewhere degeneration had free 
play. . . . The cloud was darker and thicker in some 
places than in others. There were, perhaps, races with 
whom the whole of the past became a tabula rasa, and all 
traditional knowledge being lost, religion was evolved 
afresh out of the inner consciousness. There were others 
which lost a portion, without losing the whole of their 
inherited knowledge. There were others again who lost 
scarcely anything, but hid up the truth in mystic lan- 
guage and strange symbolism. The only theory which ac- 
counts for all the facts — for the unity as well as the diver- 
sity of ancient religions — is that of a primeval revela- 
tion, variously corrupted through the manifold and 



PRIMEVAL MAN". 51 

multiform deterioration of human nature in different races 
and places." (Humboldt Library, No. 62, p. 92.) 

§ 23. Conclusions. 

In view of all the facts of the case — and the reader 
may rest assured that no important fact bearing upon the 
question at issue has been intentionally omitted — the 
conclusion to which we come is, that no sufficient reason, 
either scientific or historical, has as yet been given for 
abandoning what has been hitherto the almost universal 
faith, not of Christian peoples alone, but of the more en- 
lightened heathen also, as manifested in their traditions 
— that man was created some six or seven thousand 
years ago, and that he commenced his course as a civil- 
ized being, believing in the one only living and true God, 



III. 

EVOLUTION.* 

§ 24. Changes in Inorganic Nature. 

Our world is all the time undergoing change, in some 
part or other, through the agency of heat and frost, 
storms of wind and rain, river currents and floods, 
volcanoes and earthquakes, gradual elevations or depres- 
sions of large districts of country, and the operation of 
coral polyps in building up reefs, and stone-boring mol- 
lusks and ocean waves in tearing these reefs to pieces 
again. And judging from appearances, as well as by 
reasoning upon the nature of the agencies themselves, 
these changes have been going on for ages, and must 
have been far more extensive in early times than in our 
day. By volcanic and earthquake agency, a little more 
than a year ago, mountains were thrown up, and a large 
district of level country sunk in the ocean in the neigh- 
borhood of the Island of Sumatra. On our own coast, 
at Nag's Head, the winds have piled up the sand-hill 
from which the place takes its name, where was an inlet 
from the ocean to the Sound less than a century ago. 
These are instances of this class of changes of recent oc- 
currences. The only general truth, or law, respecting 
them demanding attention in the present discussion is 
that from the very nature of the agencies by which they 

i * The substance of this paper was originally delivered as two 
lectures, in Norfolk, Va., during October, 1854, and subsequently 
published in pamphlet form. 



EVOLUTION. 53 

are effected these changes must be confined to inorganic 
nature. It is the world, in the narrower sense of the 
word alone, which can be directly affected by them. 

The series of changes of this kind which our world is 
believed to have undergone, while they constitute a de- 
velopment of that world — an evolution, in the etymolog- 
ical sense of the word, and are sometimes spoken of as 
cosmical evolution, they have nothing to do with evolu- 
tion in the sense in which. Darwin uses the word — " de- 
scent with modifications" — they are not embraced in the 
evolution 1 propose to discuss in the present paper. 

§ 25. Changes which Constitute Growth. 

By a series of changes and variations, the acorn develops 
into an oak, the egg into a full-grown fowl. The mature 
being — the oak — is very unlike the organism from which 
it sprung ; and yet no one who has watched this growth- 
development can doubt for a moment the identity of 
the oak with the acorn. In some instances the variations 
which constitute growth-development are very great and 
very remarkable — e.g., the silk-worm appears at first as 
a small oval egg. This hatches, as we say, and instead 
of the egg we have a naked green caterpillar, with the 
regular perpendicular insect mouth, and feeding upon 
leaves. When this caterpillar has attained its growth, 
it fashions for itself a curious case called a cocoon, arfd 
enclosing itself therein, is transformed into a chrysalis ; 
and then, after remaining for a season in a dormant state, 
it comes forth a winged moth, with the structure of its 
mouth so changed that it can no longer feed upon leaves 
as it once did, but must have liquid food, such as honey ; 
and furnished with perfect wings, its companionship is 
no longer with worms, but with birds of the air. No 
less remarkable are the variations in the growth-develop- 



54 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

ment of the frog. It is first known to us as an egg. 
This hatches into a tadpole, an animal destitute of limbs, 
and propelling itself through the water, and breathing 
through gills, as fishes do. After a season its gills disap 
pear, its tail is absorbed, articulate limbs grow, and it 
becomes a land-animal, breathing the air, and incapable 
of living in'the water as it once did. 

Still more remarkable, in some particulars at the least, 
are the changes which mark the growth-development of 
certain parasites. Of the common tape-worm, Dr. An- 
drew Wilson, in his " Facts and Fictions of Zoology," 
tells us that " it begins life as a minute body, set free 
from its coverings and investments, and provided with a 
special boring apparatus, consisting of six hooks. This 
little creature will perish unless it can gain access to the 
body of some warm-blooded quadruped ; and the pig 
accordingly appears on the scene as the most convenient 
host for the reception of the little embryo. But within 
the body of the pig there is not the slightest possibility 
of the little embryo becoming a tape- worm. The pig has 
merely to perform the part of an unconscious nurse, and 
to prepare its guest for a yet higher stage of existence. 
Being swallowed by the pig, the young parasite bores 
its way through the tissues from the digestive system to 
the muscles of the animal, and there develops around its 
body a kind of bag or sack. In this state it represents 
the cystic worm of old writers ; and occasionally it may 
prefer the liver, brain, or even the eye of its first host to 
the muscles in which it usually resides. Here, however, 
it can attain no further development. If the pig dies a 
natural death there can be no possibility of the tape-worm 
stage being evolved ; but if, as is most likely, the pig 
suffers death at the butcher's hands, the little cystic 
worms may be bought by mankind at large along with 



EVOLUTION. 55 

the pork in which they are contained. Such persons as 
partake of this comestible in an imperfectly cooked con- 
dition thereby qualify themselves for becoming the hosts 
of tape- worms, since, when a cystic worm from the 
muscle of the pig is introduced into the human stomach, 
the little bladder or sack which the worm possesses drops 
off, and the minute head of the worm becomes attached 
to the living membrane of the digestive system. Once 
fixed in this position, the circle of development may be 
said to be complete. A process of budding sets in, and 
joint after joint is produced, until the adult tape- worm, 
measuring, it may be, many feet in length, is developed, 
while each egg of this full-grown being, if surrounded 
with the requisite conditions, and if provided with a pig- 
host to begin with, will repeat the marvellous and compli- 
cated life-history of its parent." (" Humboldt Library," 
No. 29, p. 46.) 

In the case of man, the variations are not near so great 
as in the cases just cited ; yet in the earlier stages of 
his growth-development — in his embryonic condition — 
he presents successive forms in which an active imagina- 
tion can discover some resemblance to the fish, the reptile, 
and th« mammalian quadruped ; and even after birth, 
when he first essays locomotion, it is usually after the 
manner of a quadruped. 

It has sometimes been said that at the starting-point 
of their existence all plants and animals are alike. As a 
late writer puts it, " The apple which fell in Newton's 
garden, Newton's dog Diamond, and Newton himself 
began life at the same point." This is true in a very 
limited sense only. The bodies of the apple, the dog, 
and the man are all cellular structures ; and in every ag- 
gregation of cellules there must be a first cellule around 
which the aggregation takes place ; and it may be, and, 



56 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

in fact, is true, that with our best microscopes we have 
not yet been able to discover any structural difference in 
these first cellules of the apple, the dog, and the man. 
But the fact that the apple-cellule always develops into 
an apple, the dog-cellule into a dog, and the man-cellule 
into a man, furnishes irrefragable proof that there is a 
radical difference in these cellules, either in structure or 
in the nature of the vitality with which they are endowed, 
though our microscopes may not be able to discover it. 

This whole class of changes takes place under the law 
of variation of growth-development. Co-ordinate with 
this law, we find another law limiting the range of these 
variations. 

In the case of the acorn, under the law of variation, it 
develops into the mature oak, and then the operation 
of the law, as a law of life, ceases. The oak dies, and 
by chemical agencies is resolved into its original elements. 
Its material falls back from its condition of organic mat- 
ter to that of inorganic matter again. But before its 
death the mature oak had produced its acorns, and from 
these acorns other oaks grow just as the first oak did ; 
and so this whole series of changes is repeated time after 
time. The life-story of the silk-worm, the frog, man, 
and even the parasitic tape-worm in this particular is 
the same with that of the oak. 

The law of limitation in the case of growth-develop- 
ment may be thus stated : Variation, extreme as it may 
he, never extends beyond the life of the individual plant 
or animal in which it occurs. Growth-development 
runs a certain definite round, and then we are brought 
back to the same starting-point again. By growth-de- 
velopment an oak will never become anything but an 
oak, a silk-worm will never become anything but a silk- 
worm to the end of time. 



EVOLUTION - . 57 

I ask the reader to notice this conclusion at which we 
have arrived, as many writers, ignoring this law of limita- 
tion — a. law as fixed and well determined as the law of 
variation is — appeal to these variations of growth-develop- 
ment in support of evolution, an hypothesis which pos- 
tulates, as we shall see, the transformation of an oak, 
not immediately, but by successive variations, into a silk- 
worm, a silk- worm into a frog, and a frog into a man.* 



* In a brief review of this paper, as originally published, Dr. 
Woodrow writes: ."We have recently often heard that evolution 
teaches that a cow is the descendant of the cabbage, and the oyster 
of the mucous okra, and the like ; but we certainly did not expect 
such caricatures to be equalled and even surpassed by what an ex- 
professor of natural science designed to be an honest statement of 
the truth. No evolutionist believes anything at all like that which 
is here said to be evolution." (Southern Presbyterian, May 7th, 1885.) 

"If the doctrine of evolution be true, it follows that, however 
diverse the different groups of animals and of plants may be, they 
must all, at one time or other, have been connected by gradational 
forms ; so that from the highest animals, whatever they may be, 
down to the lowest speck of protoplasmic matter in which life can be 
manifested, a series of gradations, leading from one end of the series 
to the other, either exists or has existed. Undoubtedly that is a 
necessary postulate of the doctrine of evolution." (Huxley's "New 
York Lectures on Evolution," Lecture II.) 

I would ask the reader also to notice Darwin's probable genealogy 
for man, as quoted in § 28. The frog may seem to Dr. Woodrow a 
very disreputable ancestor ; but is it any more so than Darwin's 
sea-squirt? Evolutionists cling most persistently to a statement of 
their hypothesis in general terms— e. g., " The transformation by suc- 
cessive differentiations of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous" 
— "descent with modifications." Charles Darwin is the only evolu- 
tionist, so far as I know, that has ventured to drop these generalities 
and state the hypothesis in terms which will make its meaning plain 
to the common reader. It may be true that in the actual process of 
evolution the cabbage may not have been in the particular line of 
ancestry of the cow. See the section on " Divergence in Character," 
in Chapter IV. of Darwin's " Origin of Species.' ' It may have been the 
nettle, as that has sharp thorns— a sort of vegetable horns— or possibly 



58 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

Growth-development moves in a circle, and has well 
been styled, as to its variations, a system of revolution, 
and not evolution. 

§ 26. Changes which Last beyond the Life of the 
Individual. 

There is a large class of variations in plants and animals 
which accompany changes of climate, domestication, and 
cultivation, which under the operation of u the law of 
heredity" are often perpetuated beyond the limits of a 
single life. 

As an instance of variation through change of climate, 
take the case of our Indian corn, or maize. In Virginia 
it grows to the average height of ten feet, and requires 
five or six months to mature its grain. When acclimated 
in "Vermont or Canada it grows to but half that height, 
and matures its grain in half the time required in 
Virginia. So the sweet potato {Convolvulus batatus), 
which in its native South blooms freely, producing 
regular seed, by which it can be propagated as well as 
by its tubers, has been acclimated as far north as New 
Jersey ; but there it never blooms, and has to be prop- 
agated by its tubers alone. 

Domestication and cultivation have wrought such great 
changes in many plants, that it is with difficulty we rec- 
ognize the wild stock in the improved variety — e.g., the 
crab apple in the Albemarle pippin, the dog rose in 
the cloth of gold. As the result of domestication and 
careful breeding, in the case of the horse we have the 
Flemish dray horse and the Shetland pony ; and in the 
case of the dog, the Saint Bernard and the Skye terrier. 

tlio mullein, which has woolly leaves ; but there must have been some 
plant which had reached the same stage of differentiation with the 
cabbage that did occupy a place in the ancestry of the cow. 



EVOLUTION. 59 

Variations of this kind, as they appear in our " highly 
improved varieties," have usually been effected little by 
little. A slight improvement is wrought in one genera- 
tion and perpetuated by the law of heredity ; it serves 
as the starting-point for further improvement in the 
succeeding generation, and so the highly improved 
variety secured by continual cultivation or breeding will 
present an accumulation of many variations, each in- 
considerable in itself, but in the aggregate constituting 
a great change. 

The capacity for variation in this way, while very 
great in some species of plants and animals, notably in 
those which man has usually carried with him in his mi- 
grations, in others seems to be almost entirely wanting. 
The Kentucky blue-grass has been carefully cultivated 
for many years with no appreciable change. The 
elephant has been domesticated in the East for many 
centuries, and yet naturalists tell us that no improved 
variety of the elephant has been secured. 

Such is the law of variation governing this class of 
changes — changes which by the operation of heredity are 
perpetuated beyond the limits of a single life, and which 
on this account would seem fitted for the purposes of 
evolution. Are there any laws of limitation here, as in 
the case of variations of growth-development ? I answer, 
Yes. 

1. Co-ordinate with the law of heredity tending to the 
perpetuation of varieties once secured, is the law of de- 
generation through neglect — the law of reversion to type, 
as it is more frequently called. All skilf nl stock-raisers 
know that any highly improved variety can be maintained 
only by the greatest care and the most particular atten- 
tion to certain rules of breeding which experience has 
taught them. 



60 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

Professor Drummond writes: "If we neglect a gar- 
den plant, then a natural principle of deterioration comes 
in and changes it into a worse plant ; or, if we neglect 
almost any of the domestic animals, they will rapidly re- 
vert to wild and worthless forms again. If a man neglects 
himself for a few years he will degenerate into a wild 
and bestial savage, like the dehumanized men who are 
discovered sometimes upon desert islands. The law of 
reversion to type runs through all creation." (" Natural 
Law in the Spiritual World," p. 99.) 

2. Co-ordinate with the law of variation we have been 
considering is a law of limitation, confining this varia- 
tion within the boundary lines of species, " the law of 
the permanence of species,'''' as it is called. No two 
flowers have varied more under cultivation than the rose 
and the pelargonium ; yet the rose has always con- 
tinued a rose, and the pelargonium a pelargonium. No 
two domestic animals have undergone greater changes 
by careful breeding than the horse and the dog ; yet the 
horse has always continued a horse, and the dog a dog. 

The question respecting " the permanence of species" 
is not a new question in the scientific world. On the 
contrary, it is a question which has engaged the attention 
of naturalists from a very early date, and has been as 
carefully examined and- as thoroughly discussed as any 
question in the whole range of natural science. Three 
times in the course of the present century has it been 
under discussion : in the early part of the century, in 
connection with, the introduction of the natural system 
of classification in natural history ; later on, in connec- 
tion with the question of the unity of the human race, 
as that question was involved in the slavery controversy ; 
and still more recently in connection with the subject 
we are now examining — evolution. 



EVOLUTION. 61 

The most thorough examination of this question on 
purely scientific grounds that I know of is that of Dr. 
Bachman, Professor of Natural History in the College 
of Charleston, S. C. And it may be of interest to the 
reader to know that Dr. Bachman was engaged in mak- 
ing his examination at the same time Darwin was prepar- 
ing his " Origin of Species." As exhibiting the thorough- 
ness of his examination, Dr. Bachman tells us : " A 
visit to Europe afforded us an opportunity of carrying 
with us American specimens of plants, birds, and quad- 
rupeds of all species, either identical with or closely 
allied to those of the Eastern Continent. The cabinets 
of individuals, the public museums, and the zoological 
collections of living animals were freely opened to us, 
and the best naturalists of Europe and the world united 
with us for many months in patient, minute, and varied 
examinations and comparisons. These were conducted 
in London, Edinburgh, Berlin, Dresden, and at the As- 
sociation of European naturalists that met in Germany." 
(" Unity of the Human Pace," p. 11.) The result of 
this protracted and careful study on the mind of Dr. 
Bachman was a firm conviction that all natural species 
of plants and animals are permanent ; that, vary widely 
as plants and animals may, the variation never passes the 
boundary line of natural species. 

I shall not attempt to give even a brief synopsis of this 
discussion here — time forbids ; but instead thereof I 
will ask your attention to the recently expressed conclu- 
sions of several of the most eminent scientists of the day 
— men who are entitled, if any are, to express an opinion 
on the subject. 

Prof essor Huxley writes : " After much consideration, 
and assuredly with no bias against Mr. Darwin's views, 
it is our clear conviction that, as the evidence now stands, 



62 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

it is not absolutely proven that a group of animals hav- 
ing all the characters exhibited by species in nature has 
ever been originated by selection, whether artificial or 
natural." (" Lay Sermons," p. 295.) 

Professor De Quatrefages writes: "X might here 
accumulate a mass of analogous facts and details, but 
over them all would appear a general fact including 
them, which is the expression of a law ; and here is the 
fact. Notwithstanding observations reaching back for 
thousands of years, and made on hundreds of species, we 
do not yet know a single example of intermediate species 
obtained by the crossing of animals belonging to different 
species." (" Natural History of Man.") 

Professor L. Agassiz writes : " Breeds (i.e., varieties) 
among animals are the work of man ; species were created 
by God." ("Methods of Study in Natural History," 
p. U7.) 

The Duke of Argyll, in his " Primeval Man," recently 
republished in this country, writes : " Some varieties of 
form are effected in the case of a few animals by domes- 
tication and by constant care in the selection of peculiar- 
ities transmissible to the young ; but these variations 
are all within certain limits ; and wherever human care 
relaxes or is abandoned, the old forms return and the 
selected characters disappear. The founding of new 
forms by the union of different species, even when stand- 
ing in close natural relation to each other, is absolutely 
forbidden by the sentence of sterility which Nature pro- 
nounces and enforces upon all hybrid offspring. And 
so it results that man has never seen the origin of any 
species. Creation by birth is the only kind of creation 
he has ever seen ; and from this kind of creation he has 
never seen a new species come." (" Primeval Man," 
pp. 39, 40.) 



EVOLUTION - . 63 

Even Darwin virtually concedes the permanence of 
natural species when he writes : " I doubt whether any 
case of a perfectly fertile hybrid animal^can be con- 
sidered as thoroughly well authenticated." (" Origin of 
Species," p. 238.) 

The difficulty of settling beyond all controversy the 
question under consideration arises mainly from two 
sources — viz, : (1) the confounding of artificial and 
natural species. The law concerns natural species alone. 
Artificial species, erected by naturalists for convenience 
of classification, are not always coterminous with nat- 
ural species — e.g., some naturalists make four artificial 
species of the one natural species of dog ; and (2). the 
fact that the boundary line of many comparatively un- 
known natural species of plants and animals has been, as 
yet, but provisionally determined. But if the judgment 
in matters of fact of such men as Bachman, and Huxley, 
and De Quatrefages, and Agassiz, and the Duke of 
Argyll is to be trusted, and science is to embody facts 
and not fancies, I think it may be fairly claimed that, in 
the present state of our knowledge, we are bound to 
consider the law of the permanence of natural species as 
an established law, and in all our reasoning to treat it 
as such. 

§ 27. Evolution as held by Herbert Spencer. 

Evolution is defined by Herbert Spencer as " the 
transformation of the homogeneous, through successive 
differentiations, into the heterogeneous^ ( u First Prin- 
ciples," p. 148.) In this, its widest range, evolution is 
held by a few only. 

In the words of Principal Dawson, it is a hypothesis 
" which solves the question of human origin by assuming 
that human nature exists potentially in mere inorganic 



64 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

matter, and that a chain of spontaneous derivation con- 
nects incandescent molecules or star dust with the world, 
and with r&an himself." ("The Earth and ]\Ian," 
p. 316.) 

Of evolution in this form Professor Tyndall writes : 
" The question concerning the origin of life is, whether 
it is due to a certain fiat — ' Let life be ' — or to a process 
of evolution ? Was it potentially in matter at the begin- 
ning, or was it inserted at a later period ? However 
the conviction here or there may be influenced, the proc- 
ess must be slow which commends this hypothesis of 
natural evolution to the public mind. For what are the 
core and essence of this hypothesis ? Strip it naked, 
and you stand face to face with the notion, that not alone 
the more ignoble forms of animalcular and animal life, 
not alone the nobler forms of horse and lion, not alone 
the wonderful and exquisite mechanism of the human 
body, but the human mind itself — emotion, intellect, will, 
and all their phenomena — were once latent in a fiery 
cloud. Surely, the mere statement of such a notion is 
more than a refutation. 1 do not think that any holder 
of this evolution hj^pothesis would say that 1 overstate 
it or overstrain it in any way. I merely strip it of all 
vagueness, and bring before # you unclothed aud unvar- 
nished the notion by which it must stand or fall. Surely, 
these notions represent an absurdity too monstrous to be 
entertained by any sane mind." (London Athe?iceum, 
September 4th, 1870.) 

Why is it that Professor Tyndall — and in this the great 
body of scientists agree with him — rejects evolution in 
this form so emphatically ? 1 answer, because it is ir- 
reconcilable with one of the best-ascertained laws of biol- 
ogy, or the science of life. 

For a long time two opposite theories respecting the 



EVOLUTION. 65 

origin of life divided the scientific world : one, that mat- 
ter can of itself generate life ; the other, that life can 
come only from pre-existing life. This subject, often 
discussed before, in the last few years has been carefully 
re-examined by some of our most eminent scientific 
experimenters in connection with the discussion of evolu- 
tion, in part, but more especially in connection with the 
more practical question of the nature and propagation of 
certain diseases in plants and animals — e.g., the diseases 
which, a few years ago, attacked the vine and the silk- 
worm in France, and for a time threatened their de- 
struction. 

The result of this careful re- examination is stated by 
Professor Drummond in the words : " A decided and 
authoritative conclusion has now taken place in science. 
So far as science can settle anything, this question is 
settled. The attempt to get the living out of the dead 
has failed. Spontaneous generation has to be given up. 
And it is now recognized on every hand that life can 
come only from the touch of life." (" Natural Law in 
the Spiritual World," p. 63.) And in confirmation of 
this statement Drummond quotes : 

Tyndall. — " I affirm that no shred of trustworthy ex- 
perimental testimony exists to prove that life, in our 
day, has ever appeared independently of antecedent 
life." 

Stirling. — " We are in the presence of the one incom- 
municable gulf — the gulf of all gulfs — the gulf which 
Mr. Huxley's protoplasm is as powerless to efface as any 
other material expedient that has ever been suggested 
since the eyes of men first looked into it — the mighty 
gulf between death and life." 

Huxley. — " The present state of knowledge furnishes 
us with no link between the living and the non-living." 



66 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

Virchow. — " "Who ever recalls to mind the lamentable 
failure of all the attempts made very recently to discover 
a decided support for the generatio cequivoca in the lower 
forms of transition from the inorganic to the organic 
world, w T ill feel it doubly serious to demand that this 
theory, so utterly discredited, should be in any way ac- 
cepted as the basis of all our views of life." 

" All really scientific experience tells us that life can 
be produced from a living antecedent only." 

On such ground as this true science demands that 
if we adopt the hypothesis of evolution at all, its work 
must begin with the existence of life in the world — it 
can never bridge over the gulf which separates the living 
from the non-living. 

§ 28. Evolution as held by Charles Darwin. 

Darwin excludes the inorganic world from the range 
of the evolution which he contends for by the terms of 
his definition — viz. : ' ' descent with modifications. ' ' De- 
scent in the sense in which he uses the word is " a pro- 
ceeding from a progenitor, birth ' ' (Webster), and so 
implies the previous existence of life. He doubtless 
believed all that geology teaches respecting the changes 
our earth has undergone in the past, but aware of the fact 
that an impassable gulf separated between the living and 
the non-living — impassable in so far as " natural selec- 
tion," the immediate agent in evolution, according to his 
hypothesis, is concerned, he avoids all difficulties hence 
arising by starting with certain " primordial living 
beings," three or four at the most — possibly only one — 
whose origin he does not attempt to account for, and de- 
rives all other living beings, both plants and animals, 
therefrom by evolution. 

His doctrine, stated in his own words, is : " Man is de- 



EVOLUTION - . 67 

scended from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and 
pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits, and an in- 
habitant of the Old World. This creature, if its whole 
structure had been examined by a naturalist, would have 
been classed among the quadrumana, as surely as would 
the common and more ancient of the New World mon- 
keys. The quadrumana and all the higher mammals are 
probably derived from an ancient marsupial animal" — 
the marsupial most common in Virginia is the opos- 
sum — " and this through a long line of diversified forms, 
either from some reptile-like or some amphibian-like 
creature, and this again from some fish-like animal. In 
the dim obscurity of the past we can see that the pro- 
genitor of all the vertebrates must have been an aquatic 
animal, provided with branchia" — i.e., gills — " with the 
two sexes united in the same individual, and with the most 
important organs of the body, such as the brain and 
heart, imperfectly developed. This animal seems to 
have been more like the larvse of our existing ascidians" 
— sea-squirts, as they are commonly called — " than any 
other known form. " (" Descent of Man," vol. 2, p. 372.) 

As Darwin limits the range of evolution in one direc- 
tion by excluding inorganic nature— all that preceded 
the existence of life in the world — so others, of eminent 
attainments in science, limit its range in the opposite 
direction, and exclude the origin of man from its phe- 
nomena. 

If the conclusion reached in our examination of the 
question respecting primeval man be accepted — viz., 
" That man commenced his course as a civilized being, 
believing in the one only living and true God " (§ 23), it 
is conceded on all hands that he cannot be the product of 
evolution from a brute. 

Professor De Quatrefages, at the close of a lengthened 



68 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

discussion of the subject of man's origin, writes : " To 
sum up, the theory that man is descended from the 
monkey by means of successive modifications is a brilliant 
fancy which has no support in precise facts ; in most 
cases it depends upon possibilities, and often upon pos- 
sibilities in flagrant opposition to facts. In the name 
of scientific truth I affirm that we have had for ancestors 
neither gorilla nor ourang-outang nor chimpanzee." 
(" Natural History of Man," p. 86.) 

Principal Dawson writes : " Evolution cheats us with 
the semblance of a man without the reality. Shave and 
paint your ape as you may, clothe him and set him upon 
his feet, still he fails greatly of ' the human form 
divine ;' and so it is with him morally and spiritually 
as well. We have seen that he wants the instinct of im- 
mortality, the love of God, the mental and spiritual 
power of exercising dominion over the earth. " (" The 
Earth and Man," p. 395.) 

The possession of intellect and conscience ; the capac- 
ity for distinguishing between truth and error, right and 
wrong ; the ability to communicate thought by language, 
and to originate the fine arts* — painting, sculpture, archi- 
tecture — and to start and carry forward all that is em- 
braced in our modern civilization, to say nothing of 
anatomical differences, make between the ape and man 
not as wide a gulf, it may be, as that which separates 
between the living and the non-living, but a gulf as 
utterly impassable. 

§ 29. Evolution in its Limited Range. 

In view of the facts stated in the last section, such 
naturalists as Virchow of Germany, Wallace of England, 
and Dana of our own country unite with De Quatre- 



EVOLUTION". 69 

fages and Dawson in rejecting the hypothesis of evolu- 
tion as applied to man. 

Taking the hypothesis, now, in its limited range as 
Beginning the series with Darwin '<§ primordial living 
"beings, and excluding the origin of man from its phe- 
nomena — and it is with these limitations it is generally 
held, where it is held at all — may we accept it, on scien- 
tific grounds, as probably true f 

I put the question in this form, because evolution is, 
to use the words of Professor Huxley, " as yet a hypoth- 
esis, and not the theory of species." (" Lay Sermons," 
p. 295.)* And a hypothesis is merely "a provisional 
explanation of phenomena," and therefore to be held 
ready to be given up whenever a more satisfactory ex- 
planation is offered, and should never be accounted as 

* Evolutionists differ, not only in the range which they assign 
to its operation, but also as to the means by which this evolution is 
effected. The following "conspectus" of the several theories is 
from Professor Winchell's "Doctrine of Evolution," pp. 44, 45. 

"Through a force which is a mode of the unknowable." — Spencer. 

Through external forces. 

" Physical surroundings {Transmutation).'''' — De Maillet. 

Conflicts of individuals, or " natural selection." 

Embracing mental and moral nature. 

"By insensible gradations (Variative)." — Darwin, Haeckel, Chap- 
man, etc. 

" With occasional leaps (Saltative)." — Huxley. 

" Excluding the mind and body of man." — Wallace. 

Through an internal force, influenced by external conditions. 

"Perpetual effort to improve (Conative-variative)." — Lamarck, St. 
Hilaire. 

Genetic process exclusively (Filiative). 

" Prolonged development of embryo (Variative-filiative)." 

— " Vestiges." 

"Accelerated development (Variative-filiative).'" — Hyatt and Cope. 

"Extraordinary births (Saltaiive-thamogene)." — Parsons, Owen, 
Mivart. 

" Partheno-Genesis (Saltalive-filiativey , — Ferris, Kolliker. 



70 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

an integral part of science itself. True science is made 
rip of a statement of facts and of conclusions reached 
by reasoning npon these facts ; and hence, in the his- 
tory of science, while hypotheses innumerable have 
arisen, been popular for a season, and then passed away 
and been forgotten, true science has remained unchanged. 
Huxley rests the claim of evolution to acceptance mainly 
upon the gradual advance in the type of living beings, 
as we learn the history of organic nature from a study 
of the f ossiferous rock strata of the earth, and the 
satisfactory explanation which it gives of the natural 
grouping of plants and animals, as set forth in the 
natural system of classification, now universally adopted 
by botanists and zoologists. 

Darwin, in addition to this, urges certain facts respect- 
ing the geographical distribution of plants and animals 
• — the variation which animals undergo in the earlier 
stages of their existence, as they present themselves in 
our study of embryology, and the existence of rudi- 
mentary organs in certain animals — all which he contends 
are better and more fully explained by the hypothesis of 
evolution than in any other way. 

Before entering upon a particular examination of 
these several points, I would remind the reader that 
there is another hypothesis — we will call it a hypothesis 
for the present —covering the same ground that evolu- 
tion does, which was at one time universally adopted, 
and even now is held by men of no mean attainments 
in science — e.g., Louis Agassiz and Principal Dawson — 
viz. : the hypothesis of creation— creation by an almighty, 
intelligent being, working according to a plan, and with 
a definite end in view. And I will ask him especially 
to notice two particulars in this hypothesis, as it is set 
forth in the oldest cosmogony extant — a cosmogony which 



EVOLUTION. 71 

has moulded the thoughts on this subject of many genera- 
tions. 

(1) Creation is not a single act of the Almighty, by 
which our world, embracing organic as well as inorganic 
nature, was brought into being, but a continuous work, 
or succession of acts, extending over a long period, but 
terminating with the creation of man ; and (2) in the 
creation of plants and animals they were not brought 
into being as single individuals, or pairs at the most, as 
evolution demands ; but when the Creator spake He said : 
" Let the watgrs bring forth abundantly (literally swarm 
fortJi) the moving creature that hath life, and fowls 
that they may fly above the earth, in the open firmament 
of heaven." (Gen. 1 : 20.) The result of such a work 
of creation was at once to people the air, the earth, and 
the sea with many individuals or pairs of every species 
intended to inhabit them — man, the species homo, 
being the only exception to this general rule. 

§ 30. Arguments for Evolution. 

Turning now to an examination of the several argu- 
ments by which evolution is urged upon our acceptance 
by its advocates, we will consider them in order, begin- 
ning with the least important. 

1. The existence of rudimentary organs in certain 
plants and animals. Giving instances of rudimentary 
organs, Darwin writes : "In the mammalia the males pos- 
sess rudimentary mammae ; in snakes one lobe of the lungs 
is rudimentary ; in birds the hastard-wing may safely be 
considered a rudimentary digit, and in some species is 
so far rudimentary that it cannot be used for flight. 
What can be more curious than the presence of teeth in 
foetal whales, which when grown up have not a tooth in 
their heads, or the teeth which never cut through the 



72 NATUKE AND KEVELATION". 

gums in the upper jaws of unborn calves !" And sub- 
sequently he adds : " It appears probable that disuse has 
been the main agent in rendering organs rudimentary. 
It would at first lead by slow steps to the more and more 
complete reduction of a part, until at last it became 
rudimentary, as in the case of the eyes of the animals 
inhabiting dark caverns, and of the wings of birds in- 
habiting oceanic islands, which have seldom been forced 
by beasts of prey to take flight, and have ultimately lost 
the power of flying." (" Origin of Species," pp. 406, 
408.) 

In reply I would say, Darwin's explanation of the 
origin of rudimentary organs may be the true one — in 
some cases it doubtless is ; but (1) I do not see how, 
when thus explained, they furnish any support to the 
hypothesis of evolution ; the cases as he states them are 
cases of degeneration, and not of evolution ; and (2) the 
variations here cited are not variations originating new 
species, but simply new varieties of an old species. 
Respecting one of the blind animals inhabiting the Mam- 
moth Cave in Kentucky — the cave rat — Darwin tells us 
4 ' two of them were captured by Professor Silliman at 
about half a mile distance from the mouth of the cave, 
and therefore not in the prof oundest depths. Their eyes 
were lustrous and of large size ; and these animals, as I 
am informed by Professor Silliman, after having been ex- 
posed for about a month to a graduated light, acquired a 
dim perception of objects." ("Origin of Species," ch. 5.) 
The blindness of this cave rat no more entitled it to be 
considered a species different from that inhabiting the 
country adjacent to the cave than the blindness of the 
blind man entitles him to be considered a species of man 
different from the men around him whose eyes yet serve 
the purposes of sight. No naturalist, in so far as I know, 



EVOLUTION. 73 

lias ever proposed to classify blind men even as a variety 
of the species homo ; and certainly not as a new species. 

2. The facts of embryology are cited in support of the 
hypothesis of evolution. On this subject Spencer writes : 
" That the uneducated and the ill-educated should think 
that the hypothesis that all races of beings, man inclusive, 
may in process of time have been evolved from the 
simplest monad, a ludicrous one, is not to be wondered at. 
But for the physiologist, who knows that every individual 
being is so evolved, who knows, further, that in their 
earliest condition the germs of all plants and animals what- 
ever are so similar, that there is no appreciable distinc- 
tion among them which would enable us to determine 
whether a particular molecule is the germ of a conferva 
or of an oak, of a zoophyte or of a man ; for him to 
make a difficulty of the matter is inexcusable. Surely, if 
a single cell may, when subjected to certain influences, 
become a man in the space of twenty years, there is 
nothing absurd in the hypothesis that under certain other 
influences a cell may in the course of millions of years 
give origin to the human race. The two processes are 
generically the same, and differ only in length and com- 
plexity." (" Progress," Humboldt Library, No. 17, 
p. 268.) 

To this 1 reply : (1) All the variations with which the 
study of embryology has made ns acquainted, and to 
which Spencer refers in the above-quoted paragraph, 
are variations of growth-development, and, as we have 
already seen (§ 25), belong to a system of revolution, and 
not evolution ; they are parts of a series which runs a 
certain round, returning ever to the same starting-point 
again ; they belong to the history of an individual life, 
and are repeated only as that life is repeated. In the 
case of the silk- worm moth, it is first an egg, then a 



74 NATURE AND REVELATION". 

caterpillar, then a chrysalis, and lastly a winged insect ; 
and just such as it is to-day it was six thousand years 
ago, in the garden of Eden ; and although it has passed 
through this whole series of changes six thousand times, 
it has made no upward progress in its form and structure ; 
there has been through its growth-variations no evolu- 
tion into a creature of a higher order ; (2) these vari- 
ations of growth-development exhibit, it is true, possi- 
bilities of change in animal structure, and that is all 
that can be claimed for them. De Quatrefages well 
says : " When we get upon the ground of possibility, I 
know not where we shall stop. Everything is possible 
except that which implies contradiction. Consequently, 
we are no longer on the ground of science, which de- 
mands positive, precise facts. We are living in the land 
of romance." ("'Natural History of Man," p. 82.) 

3 . Th e geographical distrib utio n of plan tsand animals 
is appealed to by evolutionists ; especially the fact that 
certain species are to be found in certain countries only 
— e.g., the kangaroo in Australia and the sloth in South 
America ; and it is said, if we suppose them to be the 
product of evolution, we can readily understand how, 
having been evolved in the countries in which they are 
found, they have not yet spread to other parts of the 
earth. 

To this I reply, True ; but on the hypothesis of crea- 
tion, we may suppose, either that they were never 
created in the countries in which they are wanting, as a 
wise Creator would never have created tropical animals 
in the Arctic regions, or that, having once existed widely 
diffused, they have died out in all except the lands in 
which they are now found. The disappearance by death 
of species of plants and animals from a country is an 
event of frequent occurrence in the history of our world. 



EVOLUTION". 75 

The dodo, an immense bird, once inhabiting the islands 
of Bourbon and Mauritius, has become extinct since the 
discovery of those islands by Europeans, in the course of 
the last hundred and fifty years. " Pictet catalogues 
ninety-eight species of mammals which have inhabited 
Europe in the post-glacial period. Of these, fifty-seven 
still exist unchanged, and the remaining forty-one have 
disappeared." (" The Earth and Man," p. 357.) 

The wide distribution, of certain species of animals — 
e.g., the oyster — and the oyster, in some of its varieties, 
is to be found on the coast of almost every country within 
the torrid and temperate zones — is very difficult to account 
for on the hypothesis of evolution, which traces all the 
oysters in the world back to an original oyster, evolved 
from some lower mollusk, at some one point from which 
they must all have distributed themselves. On this point 
Darwin writes : " Turning to geographical distribution, 
the difficulties encountered on the theory of ' descent 
with modification ' are serious enough. All the in- 
dividuals of the same species, and all the species of the 
same genus, or even higher group, must have descended 
from common parents ; and therefore, in however dis- 
tant and isolated parts of the world they may now be 
found, they must in the course of successive generations 
have travelled from some one point to all others. We 
are often wholly unable to conjecture how this could have 
been effected.'" (" Origin of Species," p. 414.) If the 
hypothesis of evolution seems to possess some little' 
advantage over that of creation in our study of the 
kangaroo, " the tables are turned " completely when we 
come to the study of the oyster. 

4. A fourth argument in support of evolution is 
founded upon the gradual advance in type of living 
creatures, as we learn the history of organic nature from 



76 "STATURE AND REVELATION. 

an examination of the f ossiferous rock strata of the 
earth ; and the satisfactory explanation which it fur- 
nishes of the natural groupings of plants and animals , 
as set forth in the natural system of classification now 
universally adopted by botanists and zoologists. On this 
ground, mainly, Professor Huxley advocates the hypoth- 
esis ; and, in my judgment, it furnishes the strongest ar- 
gument which has yet been brought forward in its favor. 

Evolution does afford a very simple and a very beauti- 
ful explanation of both the gradual advance in type of 
living creatures and the natural groupings of plants and 
animals. But the theory of creation by an almighty and 
intelligent creator, working with a plan determined on at 
the beginning, affords, 1 think, an explanation equally 
simple and equally beautiful. Of our system of natural 
classification Louis Agassiz writes : " Are our systems the 
inventions of naturalists, or only their readings of the 
Book of Nature ? ... If these classifications are 
not mere inventions, if they are not an attempt to 
classify for our own convenience the objects we study, 
then they are the thoughts which, whether we detect 
them or not, are expressed in nature ; then nature is the 
work of thought, the product of intelligence, carried out 
according to plan, therefore premeditated ; and in our 
study of natural objects we are approaching the thoughts 
of the Creator, reading His conceptions, interpreting a 
system that is His, and not ours." (" Methods of Study 
in Natural History," pp. 13, 14.) 

I have now given the reader a brief but, I think, a 
fair statement of the arguments by which Darwin and 
other evolutionists support their hypotheses, with my 
answers thereto. These arguments may be found stated 
at large in " The Origin of Species," first published in 
1859. In the Southern Presbyterian Beview for July, 



EVOLUTION. 77 

1884, Dr. Woodrow published his article on evolution, 
and in this lie advances the same four arguments in sup- 
port of it by which Darwin advocated it, and which are 
briefly stated above. His is the latest statement of the 
argument for evolution, by one fully competent to make 
a fair statement, that I have seen. And 1 call the 
reader's attention to it now, that he may note the fact 
that twenty-five years of earnest study and voluminous 
writing on the part of such men as Spencer and Huxley 
and Mivart has added nothing really new to the argu- 
ment originally advanced by Darwin. 

§ 31. Borne Objections to Evolution. 

The hypothesis of evolution has been objected to on 
several grounds. Among the most important of these 
are the following — viz. : 

1. In the case of certain natural groups — e.g. , the group 
of mollusks inhabiting chambered shells, such as the 
nautilus pompilius of our day — and this group stands at 
the head of the class of mollusks — the higher species ap- 
pear first and not the lowest, as evolution would require. 
Their history, if they be the product of evolution, is one 
of degradation and not advance in the scale of being. 
This truth, which has been recognized from the first, has 
become more and more evident as the discussion has pro- 
ceeded. 

Grant Allen is the only naturalist, in so far as I know, 
who has taken the hypothesis of evolution with him out 
into the field, and attempted to apply it in detail to plants 
and animals. This he has done in a very interesting 
series of papers, embraced in his " Evolutionist at Large" 
and "Vignettes from Nature." The conclusion to 
which he comes on this point he gives us in these words : 
" The real fact is, that by far the greatest number of 



78 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

plants and animals are degraded types — products of retro- 
gression rather than of upward development. Take it 
on the whole, evolution is always producing higher and 
still higher forms of life ; but at the same time stragglers 
are always falling into the rear, as the world marches 
onward, and learning how to get their livelihood in some 
new and disreputable manner, rendered possible by 
nature's latest achievements. The degraded types live 
lower lives, often at the expense of the higher, but they 
live on somehow, just as the evolution of man was fol- 
lowed by the evolution of some fifty new parasites, on 
purpose to feed upon him." (Humboldt Library, No. 
33, p. 5.) That " the evolution of man was followed by 
the evolution of some fifty new parasites on purpose to 
feed upon him," if it means anything, must mean that 
at the same time that man was developed from the 
highest of brutes, by an evolution upward, some fifty 
parasites were developed from the lower orders of the 
animal kingdom, by an evolution downward — an evolu- 
tion of degradation. If this be a correct representation 
of the facts in the case — if plants and animals are as 
often " the products of retrogression as of upward de- 
velopment," then it follows, as a necessary consequence, 
that the true starting-point of the animal kingdom was 
not with the lowest and simplest in structure — e.g., the 
eozoon — but somewhere about the middle of the line, as 
from this point only could evolution have proceeded in 
both directions. This conclusion is utterly irreconcilable 
with ' ' the record of the rocks. ' ' 

2. The great number of transition forms required to 
connect species with species, according to the evolution 
hypothesis, cannot he found. Darwin accounts for their 
absence from the kingdom of living organic nature as it 
surrounds us to-day by supposing that there is now, and 



EVOLUTION". 79 

has been all along, " a struggle for existence, with a sur- 
vival of the fittest," and that in this struggle these transi- 
tion forms have disappeared. If we admit this explana- 
tion as to the present, it does not touch the case of the 
past. If in the struggle for existence innumerable 
species have perished all along the line from the begin- 
ning — and Darwin expressly admits that this must have 
been true — how comes it that in the f ossiferous rocks, 
that vast burying- ground of the ages, none of their graves 
are to be found % Evolution demands a continuous chain, 
connecting the latest with the earliest forms ; while the 
fossiliferous rocks disclose only detached portions of a 
chain, with innumerable missing links. 

On this point Darwin writes : " Why, then, is not every 
geological formation and every stratum full of such inter- 
mediate links ? Geology assuredly does not reveal any 
such finely graduated organic chain ; and this, perhaps, 
is the most obvious and serious objection which can be 
urged against the theory. The explanation lies, as I 
believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological 
record. ' ' And he subsequently adds : ' ' The noble science 
of geology loses glory from the extreme imperfection of 
the record. The crust of the earth, with its embedded 
remains, must not be looked at as a well-filled museum, 
but as a' poor collection made at hazard, and at rare inter- 
vals." ("Origin of Species," ch. 15.) And Huxley 
writes : " It is only about the ten-thousandth part of the 
accessible parts of the earth that has been examined care- 
fully. Therefore, it is with justice that the most 
thoughtful of those who are concerned in these inquiries 
insist continually upon the imperfection of the geological 
record ; for, I repeat, it is absolutely necessary, from the 
nature of things, that that record should be of the most 
fragmentary and imperfect character." (Humboldt 



80 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

Library, No. 16, p. 192.) And yet, on the authority 
of this " most fragmentary and imperfect record," cover- 
ing "only about the ten-thousandth part of the acces- 
sible parts of the earth," Huxley does not hesitate to set 
aside the Mosaic cosmogony as irreconcilable with the 
plain teachings of geology. 

But is this record so exceedingly imperfect ? In his 
" Primeval Man" the Duke of Argyll writes : " It is true 
that this record — the geological record — is imperfect. 
But, as Sir Roderick Murchison has long ago proved, there 
are parts of that record which are singularly complete, 
and in those parts we have the proofs of creation, with- 
out any indication of development. The Silurian rocks, 
as regards oceanic life, are perfect and abundant in the 
forms they have preserved, yet there are no fish. The 
Devonian Age followed tranquilly and without a break ; 
and in the Devonian sea suddenly fish appear — appear 
in shoals and in forms of the highest and most perfect 
type. There is no trace of links or transitional forms 
between the great class of mollusks and the great class 
of fishes. There is no reason whatever to suppose that 
such forms, if they had existed, can have been destroyed 
in deposits which have preserved in wonderful perfection 
the minutest organisms." ("Primeval Man," pp. 45, 
46.) 

§ 32. Two Fatal Objections to Evolution. 

Besides the objections stated above, there are two fatal 
objections to the evolution hypothesis, not only in the 
form in which Darwin states it, but in any and all its 
forms, either of which should, I think, settle the ques- 
tion as a question between it and the theory of creation. 

I. In nature — outside the disturbing agency of intel- 
ligent man — there is no tendency to permanent change 



EVOLUTION. 81 

manifested oy plants and animals — no tendency to 
advance in structure ; but, on the contrary, a manifest 
tendency to preserve the status quo of their beginning. 
Variations, undoubtedly, do sometimes occur in plants 
and animals in a wild state, or state of nature ; but when 
they do occur, the law of u reversion to type " (§ 26) 
comes in, and soon wipes them out again. The variety 
of grape known as the scuppernong, a favorite variety 
throughout the South, I have reason to believe is a 
variety produced " in a wild state ;" and it can be prop- 
agated by layering or dividing the roots only. When- 
ever the attempt has been made to go back to the seed, 
the result has been a vine bearing not the yellowish-green 
scuppernong, with its delicious flavor, but the well- 
known black muscadine. 

The highly improved varieties of animals — and the 
same is true of plants — can be maintained only by the 
greatest care on the part of the stock-breeder. Let him 
turn out the finest Jersey cow in all his herd to run 
wild on the prairies and mingle with the wild stock 
there, and she will either die without issue, or her de- 
scendants will degenerate from generation to generation, 
until they become undistinguishable from the wild stock 
around them. 

In the ancient painting and sculptures of Egypt and 
Africa we have depicted many plants and animals as 
they existed three or four thousand years ago ; and by 
comparing these representations with the same plants 
and animals as they exist to-day, we learn that there has 
been no change in all this time. This Darwin himself 
admits. (See " Origin of Species," p. 152.) Louis Agas- 
siz, a few years ago, made an examination of the Florida 
reefs. After carefully comparing the form and structure 
of the coral polyps at work there to-day with those that 



82 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

must have built the oldest reefs, he writes : " In these 
seventy thousand years has there been any change in the 
corals living in the Gulf of Mexico ? I answer most 
emphatically, No. Astreans, porites, meandrinas, and 
madrepores were represented by exactly the same species 
seventy thousand years ago as they are now. " (" Methods 
of Study in Natural History," p. 190.) Principal Daw- 
son gives us the results of his observations on this point, 
in the case of certain mollusks, in these words : "I have 
for many years occupied a little of my leisure in collect- 
ing the numerous species of mollusks and other marine 
animals existing in a sub-fossil state in the post-pliocene 
clays of Canada, and comparing them with their modern 
successors. I do not know how long these animals have 
lived. Some of them, certainly, go back into the ter- 
tiary, and recent computation would place even the 
Glacial Age at a distance from us of more than a thou- 
sand centuries. Yet after carefully studying about two 
hundred species, and of some of them many hundred of 
specimens, I have arrived at the conclusion that they 
are absolutely unchanged." ("The Earth and Man," 
pp. 358, 359.) 

"Artificial" and "natural" selection are used by 
Darwin and Huxley as correlative terms. Thus, Dar- 
win writes : " Can the principle of selection, which we 
have seen is so potent in the hands of man, apply under 
nature ? I think we shall see that it can act most effi- 
ciently." " As man can produce, and certainly has pro- 
duced, a great result by his methodical and unconscious 
means of selection, what may not natural selection effect ?" 
" As man can produce a great result with domestic 
animals and plants by adding up in any given direction 
individual differences, so could natural selection — but far 
more easily — from having incomparably longer time for 



EVOLUTION. 83 

action." (" Origin of Species," ch. 4.) Under the 
term u artificial selection" they include all the agencies, 
whatever may be their nature, through which intelligent 
man has secured our improved varieties of plants and 
animals. By " natural selection," then, they must 
mean a natural agency, which, in the wild condition of 
plants and animals, and without any guidance of intel- 
ligence, shall accomplish the same, and even far greater 
results. Now, in view of the facts stated above, I say 
natural selection has no existence ; it is a creature of 
Darwin's imagination. The manifest tendency in nature 
is to preserve the status quo of its beginning. 

Professor Huxley virtually admits this. ' ' There is no 
fault," writes he, "to be found with Mr. Darwin's 
method, then ; but it is another question whether he 
has fulfilled all the conditions imposed by that method. 
Is it satisfactorily proved, in fact, that species may be 
originated by selection ? that there is such a thing 
as natural selection f* that none of the phenomena 

* Dr. Woodrow charges me with perverting this declaration of 
Professor Huxley. In the Southern Presbyterian of May 7th, 1885, he 
writes: "Any one can see that the question Professor Huxley is 
here discussing is not evolution, but whether natural selection is 
the process by which evolution is effected. . . . The reason why 
we have taken time to make this point perfectly clear is that Dr. Arm- 
strong quotes (as many others have done during this discussion) some 
of the expressions above given as if they were applied by Professor 
Huxley to evolution, thus wholly misunderstanding and therefore 
perverting what he has said." To this I reply : 

1. If Dr. Woodrow will read carefully what I have written, he will 
see that my quotation is a perfectly fair one — a quotation of Pro- 
fessor Huxley's virtual admission that there is no such thing as 
natural selection, in support of my position that natural selection 
has no existence. 

2. Professor Huxley, as we all know, is a pronounced evolution- 
ist ; and Professor Winchell correctly represents him as teaching that 
evolution is effected by natural selection, the only difference between 



84 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

are inconsistent with the origin of species in this way ? 
If these questions can be answered in the affirmative, 
Mr. Darwin's views step out of the rank of hypotheses 
into that of proved theories ; but so long as the 
evidence at present adduced falls short of enforcing 
that affirmation, so long to our minds must the new 
doctrine be content to remain among the former — an 
extremely valuable and in the highest degree probable 
doctrine — indeed, the only extant hypothesis which is 
worth anything in a scientific point of view, but still a 
hypothesis, and not yet the theory of species." (" Lay 
Sermons," pp. 294, 295.) 

In explanation of Professor Huxley's remark, quoted 
above, that evolution is " the only extant hypothesis 
which is worth anything in a scientific point of view," 
1 must tell the reader that he rejects the theory of crea- 
tion as unscientific, because incapable of verification by 
direct observation in our day — a position involving a very 
false view of the nature of science, as I think, and cer- 
tainly untenable by one who confesses himself compelled 
to admit of creation, or something equivalent thereto, at 
two points in the history of our world — viz. ; the origin 
of matter and the origin of life. 

II. The law of the permanance of species — that, how- 
ever great the variation wrought, under the operation of 
natural or artificial agencies, may be, it never passes the 
boundary line of species, is irreconcilable with the 
hypothesis of evolution. That hypothesis is, that each 
higher type of plant and animal has been evolved from 



him and Darwin being that while Darwin holds that natural selection 
always proceeds by " insensible gradations," Professor Huxley holds 
that there are "occasional leaps " (§ 29, note). The reconciliation of 
this belief with the implied admission, quoted above, is his work, 
not mine. 



EVOLUTION. 85 

the next below it, and so demands the passage of the 
boundary lines, not of one species only, but of all ; and 
so the boundary lines of genera, orders, and classes as 
well — all that intervenes between primordial living beings 
and man. 

The proof of the permanence of species I have already 
given you (§ 26) ; and if we are to proceed upon 
principles of true science, we must consider that question 
settled, at least for the present, and treat it as a settled 
question ; and so doing, we cannot accept the hypothesis 
of evolution. 

You will naturally ask me, How do evolutionists rec- 
oncile that hypothesis with this law % Herbert Spencer 
slurs over the difficulty in this style : " We find scat- 
tered over the globe vegetable and animal organisms 
numbering, of the one kind (according to Humboldt), 
some three hundred and twenty thousand species, and 
of the other, some two million species (see Carpenter) ; 
and if to these we add the numbers of animal and vege- 
table species that have become extinct, we may safely 
estimate the number of species that exist and have existed 
on the earth at not less than ten millions. Well, which 
is the most rational theory about these ten millions of 
species ? Is it most likely that there have been ten mill- 
ions of special creations ? or is it most likely that by 
continual modifications, due to change of circumstances, 
ten millions of varieties have been produced, as varieties 
are being produced still?" (''Progress: its Law and 
Cause.") The ten million are species when it suits 
Spencer's purpose, and, presto, the same ten million are 
but varieties when that suits his purpose best. Such 
juggling with terms is unworthy an honest scientist. 
Others have attempted a reconciliation by supposing 
that this law has not always existed ; that far back in 



86 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

ages past it is possible that a different order of things 
may have prevailed. On this point listen to De Quatre- 
fages : " In many cases these possibilities are opposed to 
the facts that transpire in our day, so that the reasoning 
comes to this ; but is it not possible that events took 
place in former times differently from those which hap- 
pen to day I Serious science, gentlemen, cannot accept 
this mode of reasoning. It does not admit changes in 
the laws which rule this world, in those which concern 
organic beings any more than in those which concern 
inorganic bodies." (" Natural History of Man," p. 82.) 

§ 33. Conclusions. 

The reader has now the whole case before him ; the 
arguments for and against the hypothesis of evolution 
briefly, but I think fairly, stated.* The justice of the 
following remarks of the Duke of Argyll no thoughtful 
scientist can question — viz.: li If the theory of develop- 
ment can be shown to involve difficulties of conception 
which are quite as great as those which it professes to 
remove, then it ceases to have any standing ground at 
all. . An hypothesis which escapes from particular 
difficulties by encountering others which are smaller 
may be tolerated, at least provisionally. But an hypothe- 
sis which, to avoid an alternative supposed to be incon- 
ceivable, adopts another alternative encompassed by 
many difficulties quite as great, is not entitled even to 
provisional acceptance." (" Primeval Man," p. 48.) 
For this reason, and on grounds purely scientific, we re- 
ject the hypothesis of evolution in all its forms. When 
Yirchow, " at the late tercentenary of the University of 
Edinburgh, in the presence of the assembled magnates of 



* For a further discussion of the theory of creation, see §§ 51-54. 



EVOLUTION". 87 

Europe, . . . declared with great emphasis that c evolu- 
tion has no scientific basis' " (Christian Thought for 
July, 1884), he expressed just the conclusion to which, in 
view of all the facts of the case, we feel constrained to 
come. The same judgment had been previously ex- 
pressed by the Duke of Argyll in the same words : " The 
various hypotheses of development," writes he, " of 
which Mr. Darwin's theory is only a new and special ver- 
sion, . . . are destitute of proof ; and in the form which 
they have yet assumed, it may justly be said that they 
involve such violations of or departures from all that we 
know of the existing order of things as to deprive them 
of all scientific basis." (" Reign of Law," 5th ed., p. 28.) 
But a few weeks ago it was stated in the public prints 
that the school authorities in Prussia had prohibited the 
teaching of evolution in their public schools. Its popu- 
larity, great for a season, is, if I mistake not, on the 
wane. The earlier chapters of its history in our day 
were bright, but bright with a delusive promise. And I 
will venture the prediction that its last chapter — and 
those now living will have the opportunity of reading 
that chapter — will be but a record of what Huxley calls 
the oft-repeated tragedy of science — the slaughter of a 
beautiful theory by ugly facts.* 



* The most recent expressions of opinion on this subject which 
I have seen, both of them from men of deservedly high standing in 
the scientific world, are as follows — viz. : 

Principal Dawson, of Canada, writes : " The doctrine of evolution, 
as held by a prominent school of German and English biologists, I 
regard as equally at variance with science, revelation, and common- 
sense, and destitute of any foundation in fact. It belongs, in truth, 
to the region of those illogical paradoxes and loose sacculations 
which have ever haunted the progress of knowledge, and have been 
dispelled only by increasing light. For this reason I have always re- 
fused to recognize the dreams of materialistic evolution as of any 



88 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

§ 34. Relation of Revelation to Evolution as Taught by 
Huxley. 

The evolution hypothesis, when taJcen in its widest 
range, " which solves the question of human origin by 
assuming that human nature exists potentially in mere 
organic matter, and that a chain of spontaneous deriva- 
tion connects incandescent molecules or star-dust with 
the world and with man himself," is, beyond all ques- 
tion, atheistic ; and it is adopted and defended by its 
advocates as an atheistic hypothesis. In this form it is 
confessedly irreconcilable with revelation and the Chris- 
tian faith. 

Just how far Professor Huxley adopts the evolution 



scientific significance, or, indeed, as belonging to science at all." 
(Philadelphia Presbyterian, July 11th, 1885.) 

Under date of August 2d, 1885, Professor George E. Post writes : 
" Yesterday I was in the Natural History department of the British 
Museum. I had business touching some fossils which I found in 
theLattakia miocene and pliocene clay beds, and about which I wrote 
an article which appeared in Nature last year. Mr. Etheridge, F.K.S., 
kindly examined and named them for me. I was anxious to hear 
what a first-rate working scientist, with perhaps the largest oppor- 
tunity for induction in the world, would say on Darwinian evolution. 
So, after he had shown me all the wonders of the establishment, I 
asked him whether, after all, this was not the workiDg out of mind 
and providence. He turned to me with a clear, honest look into my 
eyes, and replied : ' In all this great museum there is not a particle 
of evidence of transmutation of species. Nine tenths of the talk of 
evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation, and 
wholly unsupported by fact. Men adopt a theory, and then strain 
their facts to support it. I read all their books, but they make no im- 
pression on my belief in the stability of species. Moreover, the talk 
of the great antiquity of man is of the same value. There is no such 
thing as a fossil man. Men are ready to regard you as a fool if you 
do not go with them in all their vagaries ; but this museum is full of 
proofs of the utter falsity of their views.' " (Central Presbyterian, 
September lGth, 1885.) 



EVOLUTION. 89 

hypothesis in this form I will not undertake to say, but 
will give the reader his statement of his belief in his own 
words. In his New York Lectures he writes : " The 
hypothesis of evolution supposes that, at any compara- 
tively late period of past time, our imaginary spectator " 
(he had previously written, " I will ask you to imagine 
what would have been visible to a spectator of the events 
which constitute the history of the earth") " would meet 
with a state of things very similar to that which now 
obtains ; but that the likeness of the past to the present 
would gradually become less and less in proportion to 
the remoteness of his period of observation from the 
present day ; that the existing distribution of mountains 
and plains, of rivers and seas, would show itself to be 
the product of a slow process of natural change, operat- 
ing upon more and more widely different antecedent 
conditions of the mineral framework of the earth, until, 
at length, in place of that framework, he would behold 
only a vast nebulous mass, representing the constituents 
of the sun and of the planetary bodies. Preceding the 
forms of life which now exist, our observer would see 
animals and plants not identical with them, but like them, 
becoming simpler and simpler, until finally the world 
of life would present nothing but that undifferentiated 
protoplasmic matter which, so far as our present knowl- 
edge goes, is the common foundation of all vital ac- 
tivity." 

" The hypothesis of evolution supposes that in all this 
vast progression there would be no breach of continuity, 
no point at which we could say, ' This is a natural proc- 
ess,' and, ' This is not a natural process,' but that the 
whole might be compared to that wonderful process of 
development which may be seen going on every day 
under our eyes, in virtue of which there arises, out of 



90 NATURE AND REVELATION". 

the semi flu id, comparatively homogeneous substance 
which we call an egg, the complicated organization of 
one of the higher animals. This, in a few words, is 
what is meant by the hypothesis of evolution ;" and in 
the same lecture he writes : " We have come to look 
upon the present as the child of the past and as the parent 
of the future ; and as we have excluded chance from a 
place in the universe, so we ignore, even as a possibility, 
the notion of any interference with the order of nature." 
(" New York Lectures on Evolution," Lecture I.) 

This, if it be not formal atheism, is virtual atheism ; 
and such Professor Clifford, of England, who had adopted 
evolution in this form, found it ; and on his dying-bed 
gave utterance to " the inexpressibly mournful thoughts 
— " It cannot be doubted that the theistic idea is a com- 
fort and a solace to those who hold it, and that the loss 
of it is a very painful loss. It cannot be doubted, at 
least by many of us in this generation, who have 
received it in our childhood, and have parted from it 
since with such searching trouble as only cradle-faiths 
can cause. We have seen the spring sun shine out of 
an empty heaven to light up a soulless earth ; we have 
felt with utter loneliness that the Great Companion is 
dead." (Christian Thought, vol, 1, p. 86.) 

§ 35. Relation of Revelation to Evolution as taught by 
Charles Darwin. 

Respecting the hypothesis of evolution as taught by 
Charles Darwin, beginning with certain primordial 
living forms, and 'including man in its range, I re- 
mark : 

1. It is plainly irreconcilable with the Bible account 
of the origin of man — " And God said, Let us make 
man in our own image, after our likeness ; and let them 



EVOLUTION. 91 

have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl 
of the air, and o^erthe cattle, and overall the earth, and 
over every creeping thing that creepeth npon the earth. 
So God created man in His own image, in the image of 
God created He him ; male and female created He them. " 
(Gen. 1 : 26, 27.) " And the Lord God formed man of 
the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the 
breath of life, and man became a living soul. . . . And 
the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, 
and he slept ; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up 
the flesh instead thereof. And the rib, which the Lord 
God had taken from man, made He a woman, and 
brought her unto the man." (Gen. 2 : 7, 21, 22.) 
Compare this with the account of the origin of man 
given by Darwin (quoted in § 28), and I think the reader 
will admit that by no fair interpretation can these two 
accounts be made to harmonize one with the other. 

2. And Darwin does not help the case when he writes : 
" When I view all beings not as special creations, but as 
the lineal descendants of some few beings who lived long 
before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, 
they seem to me to become ennobled." (" Origin of 
Species," p. 436.) It is not length of ancestry alone 
which ennobles, but character as well. And of such a 
genealogy as that which Darwin claims for himself — a 
genealogy which reads : man which was the son of a long- 
tailed, sharp- eared monkey, which was the son of an 
opossum, which was the son of a lizard, which was the 
son of a fish, which was the son of a sea-quirt — 1 cannot 
but think the more a man has of it, the worse off will 
lie be. 

3. Darwin speaks of evolution as simply " a mode of 
creation ," and so cannot be charged with formal athe- 
ism. And yet he teaches that evolution is effected 



92 MATURE AND REVELATION. 

through " natural selection;" and in explaining this 
phrase, he writes : " It is difficult to avoid personifying 
nature ; but I mean by nature only the aggregate action 
and product of many natural laws ; and by laws, the 
sequence of events as ascertained by us." (" Origin of 
Species," ch. 4.) After reading this, one will not be 
surprised at the statement made recently by the Duke of 
Argyll, in a public lecture in Glasgow : " In the last year 
of his life Mr. Darwin did me the honor of calling upon 
me in London, and I had a long and interesting conversa- 
tion with that distinguished observer of nature. In the 
course of conversation I said it was impossible to look 
at the wonderful processes of nature which he had 
observed without seeing that they were the effect and 
expression of mind. I shall never forget Mr. Darwin's 
answer. He looked at me hard and said : ' Well, it often 
comes over me with overpowering force, but at other 
times (and he shook his head) it seems to go away.' " 
(Philadelphia Presbyterian, May 16th, 1885.)* 

" The faith expressed by these chief representatives 
of evolution" (Huxley, Haeckel and Spencer) "is 
evidently, if faith at all, faith at its minimum, even in 

* The following letter was written by Darwin, a short time before 
his death, to a student at Jena, in whose mind the study of Darwin's 
book had raised religious difficulties, and who wrote to him on the 
subject : 

" Sir : I am very busy, and am an old man in delicate health, and 
have not time to answer your questions fully, even assuming that 
they are capable of being answered at all. Science and Christ have 
nothing to do with each other, except in as far as the habit of scien- 
tific investigation makes a man cautious about accepting any proof. 
As far as I am concerned, I do not believe that any revelation has ever 
been made. With regard to a future life, every one must draw his 
own conclusions from vague and contradictory probabilities. Wish- 
ing you well, I remain your obedient servant, Charles Darwin." 
(Christian Thought, vol. 1, p. 100.) 



EVOLUTION". 93 

Darwin. .Between his God of half an eternity ago, 
who woke just long enough to breathe life into a few 
material forms or only one, and then fell once more into 
a slumber so deep that it has not been broken since, and 
the no- God of Haeckel, and the mysterious It of 
Spencer, there would really seem to be not much to 
choose. Himself the moving principle of the universe 
He first framed, is, we suppose, a true conception ; but 
this is not, logically and necessarily not, the Creator of 
the evolutionists. According to them, the universe is 
essentially automatic and godless. For infinite years the 
Darwin divinity has given no sign of his existence, is 
practically non-existent, has ceased to be contemporary ; 
if not dead, is as good as dead. i The Great Companion ' 
is not, and we are left alone.' ' (Dr. Coles, in Christian 
Thought, vol. 2, p. 428.) 

§ 36. Revelation and Evolution as Taught by Dr. 
Woodrow. 

Dr. Woodrow has recently advanced a modified hy- 
pothesis of evolution as it applies to man, attributing 
the origin of man's body to evolution, while his soul is 
the product of immediate creation. His own words are : 
" There would seem to be no ground for attributing a 
different origin to man's body from that which should 
be attributed to animals ; if the existing animal species 
were immediately created, so was man ; if they were 
derived from ancestors unlike themselves, so may he 
have been. ... As regards the soul of man, which 
bears God's image, and which differs so entirely not 
merely in degree but in kind from anything in the 
animals, I believe that it was immediately created, that 
we are here so taught ; and I have not found in science 
any reason to believe otherwise. Just as t^ere is no 



94 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

scientific basis for the belief that the doctrine of deriva- 
tion by descent can bridge over the chasms which sepa- 
rate the non-existent from the existent, and the inorganic 
from the organic, so there is no such basis for the belief 
that this doctrine can bridge over the chasm which sep- 
arates the mere animal from the exalted being which is 
made in the image of God. The mineral differs from the 
animal in kind, not merely in degree ; so the animal dif- 
fers from man in kind ; and while science has traced 
numberless transitions from degree to degree, it has 
utterly failed to find any indications of transition from 
kind to kind in this sense. So in the circumstantial ac- 
count of the creation of the first woman, there are what 
seem to me insurmountable obstacles in the way of fully 
applying the doctrine of descent." {Southern Presby- 
terian Review, 1884, p. 356.) And subsequently he 
adds : " The more fully I become acquainted with the 
facts of which 1 have given a faint outline, the more 1 
am inclined to believe that it pleased God, the Almighty 
Creator, to create present and intermediate organic forms, 
not immediately but mediately, in accordance with the 
general plan involved in the hypothesis" (i.e., evolution) 
"I have been illustrating." (/Southern Presbyterian 
JSeview, p. 366.) 

Respecting the hypothesis of evolution in this form, I 
remark : 

1. It is unscientific in that it attributes the origin of 
woman, body and soul, to immediate creation, while 
man's body is the product of evolution. In the view of 
every naturalist, woman is half the species homo — is 
half the man ; and to state the hypothesis in the lan- 
guage of science, it should read : One half the body of 
man is the product of evolution, while the other half, 
with all the soul, is the product of immediate creation. 



EVOLUTION. 95 

Such an origin as this, for any species of living beings, is 
without precedent, even in the wildest speculations of 
scientists. 

2. It is, I think, irreconcilable with the account of 
man's creation given in Scripture. " And the Lord God 
formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into 
his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living 
soul. " (Gen. 2:7.) The phrase here rendered u a living 
soul," literally rendered is " an animal of life" — i.e., a 
living animal. Jamieson, in his commentary on this 
verse, writes : " At its first formation the body of man, 
so exquisitely organized, was no more than a mass of 
inert matter, till the Lord God endowed it with vitality, 
and ' breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ' — liter- 
ally, lives ; but though in the plural form, it is commonly 
rendered, life, the natural or organic life, as the phrase 
usually denotes, ' and man became a living soul ' — liter- 
ally, an animal of life (see v. 19, ch. 1, 20, 24, 30 ; 
10 : 12, 15, 16, where the word is used in this sense) ; and 
hence Bishop Warburton paraphrases the passage before 
us in the following manner : ' He breathed into this 
statue the breath of life, and the lump of clay became a 
living creature.' " Dr. McCosh writes : " There are two 
accounts of the creation of man : one in Gen. 1 : 26. 
There is counsel and decision : ' Let us make man in 
our own image.' This applies to his soul or higher 
nature. The other account is in Gen. 2:7:' And the 
Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and 
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man 
became a living soul.' This is man's organic body." 
(McCosh on Development, p. 35.) 

What is affirmed in Gen. 2 : 7 is (1) that God made 
the inanimate body of man of the dust of the ground ; 
and then (2) by a special act imparted animal life to 



96 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

that inanimate body. The product of evolution, from 
the very nature of the process, " descent with modifica- 
tion," is a living thing, possessed at the least of animal 
life. It may die very early, but at its beginning it must 
be a living thing. With this passage before us, we have 
the alternative, either (1) the body God formed was 
an inanimate body, and to this Re imparted animal life, 
which accords well with Scripture ; but there is no 
evolution possible here ; the body is lifeless, " a lump 
of clay," and life has to be imparted by a special act of 
God ; or (2) the body God formed was possessed of 
animal life, to which He afterward imparted an immortal 
soul, which accords with the doctrine of evolution, but 
is irreconcilable with the Scriptures, rightly interpreted. 

§ 37. Revelation and Evolution in its most Limited 

Range. 

The hypothesis of evolution, talking it in its most 
limited range, as excluding inorganic nature on the one 
hand, and so recognizing the fact that a great gulf 
separates between the non-living and the living ; and 
excluding also man, on the other hand, and so recogniz- 
ing the fact that an impassable gulf separates the brutes 
from immortal man, u made in the image of God," and 
understanding it as simply "a mode of creation," can- 
not be considered atheistic. Nor is it irreconcilable, as 
I think, with the Bible account of the origin of plants 
and animals in the world. The unfavorable reception 
which it has met at the hands of Christian men generally 
is owing, if I mistake not, like that of poor Tray in the 
old fable, not so much to what it is in itself, as to the 
company in which they found it. 

Experience would seem to prove that the tendency of 
evolution, in the minds of those who adopt it, is to foster 



EVOLUTION - . 97 

the conception of our world as " an automatic machine," 
running itself ; and of God as a being afar off — a concep- 
tion in striking contrast with that conveyed by the Script- 
ures — " Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, 
neither do they reap, nor gather into barns ; yet your 
Heavenly Father feedeth them. " (Matt. 6 : 26.) " Are 
not two sparrows sold for a farthing ? and one of them 
shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But 
the very hairs of your head are all numbered. ' ' (Matt. 
10 : 29, 30.) " In him we live, and move, and have our 
being." (Acts 17 : 28.) It certainly seems to have had 
this effect on the mind of Darwin, as is evident from his 
words addressed to the Duke of Argyll 3 quoted in § 35. 



IY. 

THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

§ 38. A Remarkable Fact. 

(l History lias embalmed for us," writes Professor 
Huxley, " the speculations upon the origin of living 
beings, which were among the earliest products of the 
dawning intellectual activity of man. In those early 
days positive knowledge was not to be had, but the crav- 
ings after it needed, at all hazards, to be satisfied, and 
according to the country, or the turn of thought of the 
speculator, the suggestion that all living things arose from 
the mud of the Nile, from a primeval egg, or from some 
more anthropomorphic agency, afforded a sufficient rest- 
ing-place for his curiosity. The myths of paganism are 
as dead as Osiris or Zeus, and the man who should revive 
them, in opposition to the knowledge of our time, would 
justly be laughed to scorn ; but the coeval imaginations 
current among the rude inhabitants of Palestine, recorded 
by writers whose very name and age are admitted by 
every scholar to be unknown, have unfortunately not yet 
shared their fate, but even at this day are regarded by 
nine tenths of the civilized world as the authoritative 
standard of fact and the criterion of the justice of scien- 
tific conclusions in all that relates to the origin of things, 
and, among them, of species. In this nineteenth century, 
as at the dawn of modern physical science, the cos- 
mogony of the semi-barbarous Hebrew is the incubus of 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 99 

the philosopher and the opprobrium of the orthodox. " 
(Huxley's " Lay Sermons," pp. 277, 278.) 

When Professor Huxley states that the book of 
Genesis — the book which contains " the cosmogony of 
the semi-barbarous Hebrews" — as he calls them — " is 
the work of a writer whose very name and age are ad- 
mitted to be unknown," he is stepping out of his own 
department of natural science, in which he deservedly 
ranks high as a teacher, into that of historical and literary 
criticism, of which, I doubt not, he would himself con- 
fess that he knows but little.* So far is this statement 
from being true, that I hesitate not to affirm that to-day 
nine tenths of the scholars of Great Britain and America 
regard the authenticity and genuineness of the book of 
Genesis as better established than that of any other book 
that has come down to us from antiquity. 

On the other point which his statement covers — viz. : 
the estimate in which the Mosaic cosmogony is held, to- 
day, throughout the civilized world, falling as it does 
within the department of natural science, there is no one 
more competent to express an opinion than he. And his 
statement, that while ' ' the myths of paganism are as 
dead as Osiris or Zeus, and that the man who would re- 
vive them in opposition to the knowledge of our time 
would be justly laughed to scorn," the Mosaic cosmog- 
ony " has not shared their fate, but even at this day 



* " We are now assured, upon the authority of the highest critics, 
and even of dignitaries of the church, that there is no evidence that 
Moses wrote the book of Genesis, cr knew anything about it. You 
will understand that I give no judgment— it would be an impertinence 
upon my part to volunteer even a suggestion upon such a subject. But 
that being the state of opinion among scholars and the clergy, it is 
well for the unlearned ia Hebrew lore, and for the laity, to avoid en- 
tangling themselves in such vexed questions." — Huxley's " Neva York 
Lectures on Evolution" Lecture I. 



100 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

is regarded by nine tenths of the civilized world as the 
authoritative standard of fact, and the criterion of the 
justice of scientific conclusions, in all that relates to the 
origin of things," may well challenge our careful consid- 
eration. If this be true — and we believe that it is true 
— it is a very remarkable fact in the history of human 
thought and opinion ; and it becomes us, in the spirit of 
a sound philosophy, to ask, and to answer, if we can, 
the question, Why is it, that while the cosmological 
speculations of the Egyptians and the Greeks, the two 
foremost nations of antiquity, have come to be univer- 
sally regarded as myths, " the cosmogony of the semi- 
barbarous Hebrews," in the light of this our nineteenth 
century, controls the thoughts and opinions of nine tenths 
of the civilized world ? History has a philosophy as well 
as nature ; and for so remarkable a fact as this there 
must be some reason ; and it becomes us, in entering 
upon an examination of the Mosaic cosmogony, to ascer- 
tain, if possible, what that reason is. 

The strange vitality — strange in the estimation of 
Professor Huxley — -of the Mosaic cosmogony is owing, if 
I mistake not, (1) in part, to its intimate connection 
with the religion of the Hebrews — a religion which, with 
variations in non-essentials only, has lived from the very 
beginning of human history down to the present day, 
and which, in its Christian form, is the religion of the 
nations which now dominate the world. Worshippers 
have long since disappeared from the temples of Osiris 
and Zeus, while those of the God whom Moses served, 
and in advocacy of whose worship Genesis was written, 
are now more thronged, and that by the leaders of the 
world's civilization, than at any time in the past history 
of our race. Not only does Moses' cosmogony form a 
part of the book in which this religion is taught, but it 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 101 

stands related to this religion, as setting forth a reason 
why the religion assumes the particular form which it 
does, of a worship of Jehovah. The cosmogony com- 
mences with the declaration, " In the beginning God 
created the heaven and the earth," on which Bishop Pat- 
rick remarks : ' ' Designing to hang the whole frame of his 
polity upon piety toward God, and to make the Creator 
of all the founder of his laws, he begins with Him. Not 
after the manner of the Egyptians and Phoenicians, who 
bestowed this adorable name upon a great multitude ; but 
he puts in the front of his work the name of the sole 
cause of all things, the Maker of whatsoever is seen or 
unseen ; . . . . whom therefore he would have them 
look upon, not only as the enactor of their laws, but of 
those also which all nature obeys." (Patrick's " Com- 
mentary," in loc.) Hence it comes that Moses' cos- 
mogony has always been regarded as something more 
than a mere cosmogony — as part and parcel of the religion 
which he taught, to endure as long as that religion en- 
dures, to be reverently believed wherever that religion 
prevails. 

(2) A second reason for the vitality of the Mosaic cos- 
mogony is to be found in the nature of the cosmogony 
itself. The origin of all living things in the mud of the 
Nile, as was believed among the Egyptians, or in a prim- 
itive egg, according to Greek mythology, could satisfy 
the human mind in a condition of childhood only. The 
creation of all things by an Almighty God is a doctrine 
which meets every demand of the profoundest philoso- 
phy, and may well satisfy man in his maturity. 

§ 39. "In the Beginning " according to Moses. 

The Mosaic cosmogony, contained in the first and 
second chapters of Genesis, commences with the declara- 



102 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

tion, il In the beginning God created the heaven and 
the earth. ' ' 

" In the beginning" — i.e., in the beginning or at the 
outset of the work of creation here recorded. John in 
his gospel, doubtless referring to this language of Moses, 
and intending to teach the eternal existence of the Word, 
writes: " In the beginning was the "Word" — i.e., the 
Word existed. In using this phrase the design of Moses 
seems to have been to carry back the mind of the reader 
to a period at which " the heaven and the earth" began 
their existence ; and he does this in order to convey, 
upon the highest authority, the assurance that they had 
both a beginning and creator ; that they did not spring 
into being by chance, nor, as some of the ancient philoso- 
phers taught, exist from eternity. 

" God created." The word here rendered " created" 
does not necessarily mean to make out of nothing ; in- 
deed, in so far as I know, there is no word in any lan- 
guage which has invariably such a meaning ; but " that a 
production entirely new, a really creative act, is related in 
this verse, and not merely a renovation or reconstruction 
of old and previously existing materials is evident, not 
only from the whole subsequent context, but from the 
summary of the processes described in the subsequent 
narrative, where a different word is used, denoting 
'made,' 'reconstructed,' 'arranged.' (Ch. 2 : 3, with 
Ex. 20 : 11.) The first term signifies to bring into 
being ; the other points only to a new collocation of mat- 
ter already in existence. . . . On these grounds we 
are warranted in considering the sacred historian to have 
selected the terms he has employed for the special pur- 
pose of intimating an actual creation out of nothing." 
(Jamieson's " Commentary," in loc.) 

' ' The heowen and the earth. " There is no single word 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 103 

in the Hebrew language corresponding to our English 
word universe. The phrase " the heaven and the earth" 
is the nearest equivalent to it, and is here doubtless used 
to signify the whole system of which our earth forms a 
part : the sun, the planets with their satellites, and the 
fixed stars, with all that belong to them. So Moses 
understood the expression, for he afterward wrote : 
" The Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that 
in them is." (Ex. 20 : 11.) The Jewish commentators 
interpret it as denoting " the heavens with all they con- 
tain, and the earth with all that belongs to it." Theo- 
philus, one of the early Christian Fathers, writes : " The 
heavens are mentioned before the earth, to show that 
God's works are not like ours ; for He begins at the top, 
we at the bottom — that is, He first made the fixed stars 
and all that belonged to them (so I take the word heaven 
here to signify), for they had a beginning, as well as this 
lower world, though they do not seem to be compre- 
hended in the six days' work, which relates only to this 
planetary world, as I may call it, which hath the sun for 
its centre." 

§ 40. "In the Beginning '," according to Science. 

In this opening portion of the Mosaic cosmogony there 
are two important truths taught us — viz.: (1) " the 
heaven and the earth," the universe, has not existed from 
eternity, but had a beginning ; and (2) the universe in 
its beginning was not the work of chance, but a creation 
of God. On both these points science, in so far as it is 
able to speak at all, confirms the cosmogony. 

1. The universe had a beginning. Geology, basing 
its conclusions upon observed facts, traces back the his- 
tory of our earth from the condition in which it now is 
through a succession of changes, to be beginnings of life 



104 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

in the world ; and then, in the light of very probable 
conjecture, through an earlier series of changes, back to 
what must be regarded as the beginning of the universe 
itself. About the time occupied in all these changes 
there is room for great difference of opinion ; and so no 
cautious geologist has attempted to fix that time as 
measured by years ; but about the changes themselves 
having a beginning there is no difference of opinion, and 
no room for difference. 

The " new astronomy," as it is popularly called — the 
astronomy which deals especially with the physical 
nature and structure of the heavenly bodies as they are 
made known to us by the spectroscope and improved 
telescope — testifies to the same effect, that the sun and 
planets have all had a beginning. It even ventures to 
attempt to fix the date of the sums beginning. ""We 
may say," writes Professor Langley, u with something 
like awe at the meaning to which science points, that 
the whole past of the sun cannot have been over eighteen 
million years ; and its whole future radiation cannot 
last so much more. Its probable life is covered by 
about thirty million years. No reasonable allowance for 
the fall of meteors, or for all other known causes of sup- 
ply, could possibly raise the whole terra of its existence 
to sixty million years. This is substantially Professor 
Young's view." (Professor Langley, in the Century for 
December, 1884.) 

2. The universe is not the work of chance, but a crea- 
tion of God. Astronomy testifies to a wonderful order 
pervading the universe, mathematical in its accuracy, in 
so far as the bodies astronomy has to deal with are con- 
cerned ; zoology and botany testify to an equally won- 
derful order prevailing throughout the kingdom of or- 
ganic nature — a wonderful adaptation of living creatures 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 105 

to their environments, and of the parts and organs of 
these living creatures to their functions, which are 
utterly inconsistent with the idea of their being the prod- 
uct of chance. Instead of countenancing the old hy- 
pothesis of " the fortuitous concourse of atoms," some 
ardent scientists manifest a disposition to run to the 
other extreme. Thus, Professor Huxley writes : " The 
conception of the constancy of the order of nature has 
become the dominant idea of modern thought. To per- 
sons familiar with the facts upon which that conception 
is based, and competent to estimate their significance, it 
has ceased to be conceivable that chance should have any 
place in the universe, or that events should depend upon 
any but the natural sequence of cause and effect. We 
have come to look upon the present as the child of the 
past and as the parent of the future ; and as we have 
excluded chance from a place in the universe, so we 
ignore, even as a possibility, the notion of any interfer- 
ence with the order of nature." (Huxley's "New York 
Lectures on Evolution," Lecture I.) Avoiding this ex- 
treme, the thoughtful scientist of to-day may exclaim, 
with far deeper feeling than that of David : " I am fear- 
fully and wonderfully made : marvellous are thy works ; 
and that my soul knoweth right well." (Ps. 139 : 14.) 

§ 41. Emergence from Chaos, according to Moses. 

Moses continues his cosmogony with the record, " And 
the earth was without form, and void {was waste and 
void, New Version) ; and darkness was upon the face 
of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon (was 
brooding upon, New Version, margin) the face of the 
waters. And God said, Let there be light, and there 
was light. And God saw the light, that it was good : 
and God divided the light from the darkness. And God 



106 MATURE AND REVELATION". 

called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. 
And the evening and the morning were the first day. 
{And there was evening and there was morning, one 
day, New Version.) And God said, Let there be a 
firmament {expanse, New Version, margin) in the midst 
of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the 
waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the 
waters which were under the firmament from the waters 
which were above the firmament : and it was so. And 
God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening 
and the morning were the second day. {And there 
was evening and there was morning, a second day, New 
Version.) And God said, Let the waters under the 
heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the 
dry land appear. . . . And God said, Let there be 
lights in the firmament of the heaven, to divide the day 
from the night ; and let them be for signs, and for 
seasons, and for days, and years : and let them be for 
lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon 
the earth : and it was so. And God made two great 
lights ; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser 
light to rule the night ; He made the stars also. And 
God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give 
light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and 
over the night, and to divide the light from the dark- 
ness : and God saw that it was good. And the evening 
and the morning were the fourth day." {And there was 
evening and there was morning, a fourth day, New 
Version.) (Gen. 1 : 2-9, 14-19.) 

On the expression in verse 2, " And the spirit of 
God moved upon the face of the waters," Jamieson re- 
marks : " Our English version, in its use of the word 
moved, does not give the meaning correctly ; for the 
word in the original does not convey the idea of pro- 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 107 

gressive motion, but that of brooding over — cherishing — 
the act of incubation which a fowl performs when hatch- 
ing its eggs, and the particular form of the verb implies 
a continuance of this action. It was not the self-develop- 
ment of powers inherent in matter. The creative move- 
ment was made by the will of God ; and as if to refute 
the doctrine of Pantheism, it is expressly stated that the 
action was not in but upon the face of the waters."" 
(Jamieson's " Commentary," in loc.) 

On the expression in verse 3, " Let there be light," 
Jamieson remarks : " It is deserving of particular notice 
that the substantive verb is used here, and not either the 
words ' create ' or ' made.' It was the manifestation of 
what had been previously in existence — Let light be, or, 
rather, Light shall be, not the formation of an ele- 
ment, or matter, which had no being at all till the divine 
command was issued. . . . Where all had been in- 
volved in darkness, there was an alternation of light ; 
and as unbroken gloom had reigned previous to this 
happy change, so, in describing the physical arrange- 
ment that was now established, this natural sequence is 
preserved, and the evening is reckoned before the morn- 
ing." (Jamieson's u Commentary," in loo.) 

§ 42. Emergence from Chaos, according to Science. 

This record of Genesis is evidently written in the lan- 
guage of common life, as contradistinguished from the 
more exact language of science ; it speaks of things as 
they appear, and not necessarily as they really are. (See 

MO 

In the portion of the Mosaic cosmogony now before 

us there are two important truths — important as parts 
of a cosmogony — stated, in both of which science con- 
firms the statement of Moses — viz. : (1) The earliest con- 



108 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

dition of our earth was that commonly spoken of as a 
chaos, from which the present cosmos has gradually 
emerged ; and (2) the existence of light before the sun 
appeared. 

1. That the original condition of our earth was that 
of a chaos, all geologists are agreed. That the earth 
was once a confused mass of air and earth and water, 
destitute of life, and incapable of supporting it, even in 
its lowest forms — a condition aptly described by the 
words ' c waste and void ' ' and with i ' darkness upon the 
face of the deep," is one of the settled conclusions of 
the science of our day. That from this chaotic con- 
dition of the earth our cosmos — i.e., our earth in all its 
beautiful order — has gradually emerged, is a conclusion 
equally well settled. The very term cosmogony — i.e., 
the generation of the cosmos, implies this. " That the 
present is the child of the past," is as true of the earth 
itself as of each of the nations inhabiting its surface. 
The general order of this emergence, as Moses describes 
it, is that adopted by all geologists as the result of their 
study of nature — viz. : the separation of the waters thence- 
forth to be suspended in the atmosphere from those that 
are to remain upon the surface of the earth, followed 
by a separation of the waters upon the earth's surface, 
and the gathering together of them into seas, that the dry 
land might appear ; and then, and not till then, the 
setting of the sun in the heavens to rule over the day. 

2. The existence of light before the sun appeared. 
This is a very remarkable statement, especially if we 
regard it as the statement of " a semi-barbarous Hebrew,' ' 
made amid u the dawning intellectual activity of man." 
Nothing like it is to be found among the cosmological 
speculations of the ancient Egyptians or Greeks ; and 
less than a century ago it was urged as an objection to 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 109 

the Mosaic cosmogony, that it taught a doctrine at vari- 
ance with the established order of nature — viz.: the 
existence of light before the sun — the one great source 
of all natural light. 

Now, many geologists, adopting an hypothesis orig- 
inally proposed by Lamarck, tell us that our whole solar 
system once existed as a nebulous mass of widely dif- 
fused luminous " star-dust," from which our sun, with 
all its attendant planetary bodies, have been evolved in 
the course of ages ; so that light must have existed long 
before the heat with which it is correlated in nature 
would suffer any portion of the nebulous mass to con- 
dense into a comparatively solid body like the sun. 

Whether we adopt this hypothesis or not, all geolo- 
gists agree that there must have been a period in the 
early history of our earth — its period of chaotic exist- 
ence, when light from the sun could not have reached 
its surface, but ' ' darkness must have been upon the face 
of the deep;" and that this was followed by a second 
period — the period occupied in the separation of " the 
waters which were under the firmament from the waters 
which were above the firmament," and the subsequent 
1 i gathering together the waters under the heavens into 
one place, so that the dryland might appear," during 
which light from the sun could reach the earth's surface 
in the form of diffused daylight only. Not until these 
changes were complete could the sun and moon appear, 
and begin to " be for signs, and for seasons, and for 
days, and years." It is true that the teachings of geol- 
ogy on this point can as yet, on scientific grounds 
alone, be considered, as nothing better than very prob- 
able theory ; yet it is theory so probable as to command 
the universal assent of geologists. And so we but state 
a fact when we say that modern science, in so far as 



110 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

science has anything to say in the case, confirms the cos- 
mogony of Moses on a point at which it was once thought 
to be at variance with the established order of nature. 

§ 43. The Creation of Plants and Animals, according 
to Moses. 

Moses' account of the origin of living, organized 
beings, plants, and animals is in the following words — 
viz.: " And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, 
the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit 
after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth : and 
it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb 
yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, 
whose seed was in itself, after his kind : and God saw 
that it was good. And the evening and the morning 
were the third day. (And there was evening and there 
was morning, a third day, New Yersion.) . . . 
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the 
moving creature that hath life (swarm with swarms of 
living creatures, New Yersion, margin) and fowl that 
may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 
And God created great whales (the great sea-monsters, 
New Yersion) and every living creature that moveth, 
which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their 
kind, and every winged fowl after his kind : and God 
saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, 
Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, 
and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening 
and the morning were the fifth day. (And there was 
evening and there %oas morning, a fifth day, New 
Yersion.) And God said, Let the earth bring forth the 
living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, 
and beast of the earth after his kind : and it was so. And 
God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. Ill 

after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the 
earth after his kind : and God saw that it was good." 
(Gen. 1 : 11-13, 20-25.) 

This account of the creation of plants and animals is 
worthy our attention in the following particulars — viz. : 
(1) It is a creation out of pre-existing materials, and not, 
like that of the universe, out of nothing ; (2) the origin 
of life, like the origin of matter, is traced directly to God 
himself ; (3) that special provision is made that each 
several kind of plant and animal shall continue its kind 
by natural generation ; (1) that plants and animals are 
brought into being not singly, nor in pairs, but in great 
numbers ; and (5) that this creation is said to have been 
effected in a certain order. What is the testimony of 
science on these several points ? 

§ 44. The Creation of Plants and Animals, according 
to Science. 

1. As to the creation of plants and animals out of 
pre-existing materials. Chemistry declares that plants 
and animals to-day derive all their materials from the 
inorganic world. Different as the proximate elements 
of organic nature, such as lignine, sugar, gelatine, are 
from those of inorganic nature, its ultimate elements, 
such as oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, are the same ; and im- 
possible as it may be for the chemist to form these 
proximate elements out of such materials in his labora- 
tory, we know that they are continually being thus 
formed in the organisms of living plants and animals, 
under the operation of that mysterious something we call 
life. 

2. The doctrine of the spontaneous generation of life, 
once earnestly defended by many scientists, is now 
universally abandoned. On this subject Professor 



112 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

Driimmond writes : " What essentially is involved in say- 
ing that there is no spontaneous generation of life ? It 
is meant that the passage from the mineral world to the 
plant or animal world is hermetically sealed on the 
mineral side. This inorganic world is staked off from 
the living world by barriers which have never yet been 
crossed from within. No change of substance, no modi- 
fication of environments, no chemistry, no electricity, 
nor any form of energy, nor any evolution, can endow 
any single atom of the mineral world with the attribute 
of life. Only by the bending down into the dead world 
of some living form can these dead atoms be gifted with 
the properties of vitality ; without this preliminary con- 
tact with life they remain fixed in the inorganic sphere 
forever. It is a very mysterious law which guards in 
this way the portals of the living world. And if there 
is one thing in nature more worthy of pondering for its 
strangeness than another, it is the spectacle of this vast 
helpless world of the dead, cut off from the living by the 
law of biogenesis, and denied forever the possibility of 
resurrection within itself. So very strange a thing, in- 
deed, is this broad line in nature, that science has long 
and urgently sought to obliterate it. Biogenesis stands 
in the way of some forms of evolution with such stern 
persistence that the assaults upon this law for number 
and thoroughness have been unparalleled. But as we 
have said, it has stood the test. Nature, to the modern 
eye, stands broken in two. The physical laws may ex- 
plain the inorganic world ; the biological law may account 
for the development of the organic ; but of the point 
where they meet, of the strange border-land between the 
dead and the living, science is silent. It is as if God had 
placed everything in earth and heaven in the hands of 
nature, but had reserved a point at the genesis of life 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 113 

for His direct appearing." ("Natural Law in the 
Spiritual World," pp. 68, 69.) See §27. 

3. According to Moses, at their creation special 
provision was made that each several hind of plant and 
animal shoidd continue its hind by natural generation. 
On this point science, long at variance with the Mosaic 
cosmogony, is now in harmony therewith. Professor 
Huxley writes : " As regards the second problem offered 
to us "by Redi, whether xenogenesis obtains side by side 
with homogenesis, whether, that is, there exists not only 
the ordinary living things giving rise to offspring which 
run through the same cycle as themselves, but also others, 
producing offspring which are of a totally different 
character from themselves, the reseaches of two centu- 
ries have led to a different result. That the grubs found 
in galls are no product of the plants upon which the galls 
grow, but are the result of the introduction of the eggs 
of insects into the substance of the plants, was made out 
by Vallisnieri, Raumer, and others before the end of 
the first half of the eighteenth century. The tape-worms, 
bladder- worms, and flukes continued to be a stronghold 
of the advocates of xenogenesis for a much longer 
period. Indeed, it is only within the last thirty years 
that the splendid patience of Yon Siebold and other 
helminthologists has succeeded in tracing every such 
parasite, often through the strangest wanderings and 
metamorphoses, to an egg derived from a parent actually 
or potentially like itself ; and the tendency of inquiries 
elsewhere has all been in the same direction." (" Lay 
Sermons," p. 367.) 

Subsequently speaking of the pebrine — i.e., the disease 
which attacked the silk-worm, and for a time threatened 
the destruction of the silk culture in France a few years 
ago, he writes: " Such being the facts respecting the 



114 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

pebrine, what are the indications as to the method of pre- 
venting it ? It is obvious that this depends upon the 
way in which the panhistophyton' , — the parasite which 
causes the pebrine — " is generated. If it may be gen- 
erated by abiogenesis or by xenogenesis within the silk- 
worm or its moth, the extirpation of the disease must 
depend upon the prevention of the occurrence of the 
conditions under which this generation takes place. But 
if, on the other hand, the panhistophyton is an indepen- 
dent organism, which is no more generated by the silk- 
worm than the mistletoe is generated by the oak or ap- 
ple-tree on which it grows, though it may need the silk- 
worm for its development in the same way as the mistle- 
toe needs the tree, then the indications are totally differ- 
ent. The sole thing to be done is, to get rid of and keep 
away the germs of the panhistophyton. As might be 
imagined from the course of his previous investigations, 
M. Pasteur was led to believe that the latter was the right 
theory ; and guided by that theory, he devised a method 
of extirpating the disease which has proved to be com- 
pletely successful wherever it has been properly carried 
out." (" Lay Sermons," p. 375.) In the case of the 
higher forms of plant and animal life, that the offspring 
was the product of a parent like itself has been long 
known and universally admitted. That this same law 
obtains among the lower orders, even the lowest, science 
has now demonstrated. 

4. According to Moses, plants and animals, with the 
exception of man, were not brought into being as single 
individuals, or as pairs at the most, but when God 
spake He said : " Let the waters swarm with swarms of 
living creatures." The result of such a work of creation 
was at once to people the air, the earth, and seas with 
many individuals or pairs of every species intended to 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 115 

inhabit them. To such a creation as this the fossiliferous 
rocks testify. Not at one point on the earth's surface 
only does a particular species appear, but at many points 
at the same time, and these points far distant from each 
other. The wide distribution of certain species possess- 
ing little or no power of locomotion — e.g., the oyster, at 
the present day, furnishes a serious difficulty in the way 
of the evolutionist (§ 30). And when we go back and 
find this wide distribution existing from the beginning, 
the difficulty becomes almost insurmountable. 

5. The Mosaic cosmogony presents us with a certain 
order of creation — viz.: (1) " Grass, herbs, and trees" — 
i.e., the vegetable kingdom, and this before the sun, 
moon, and stars were " set in the firmament of heaven 
to give light upon the earth ;" (2) fishes, including all 
the numerous inhabitants of the waters, together with 
" great sea-monsters," and " birds," or flying creatures, 
including insects ; (3) " cattle, and creeping things, and 
beasts of the earth." 

Plants alone are capable of feeding directly upon inor- 
ganic matter. Animals, although the ultimate composi- 
tion of their food is the same with that of plants, are 
incapable of digesting that food until it has under- 
gone the preliminary organization which it acquires in 
assuming a vegetable form. On this point Professor 
Guyot writes : " The most important function of the 
plant in the economy of nature is, with the aid of the 
sun's light, to turn inorganic into organic matter, and 
thus prepare food for the animal. Nothing else in nature 
does this important work. The animal cannot do it, 
and starves in the midst of an abuu dance of the materials 
needed for the building up of its body. . . . The 
plant, therefore, is the indispensable basis of all animal 
life ; for though animals partially feed upon each other, 



116 STATURE AND REVELATION". 

ultimately the organic matter they need mnst come from 
the plant." (" Creation," pp. 88, 89.) The Paleozoic 
Age, when the crust of the earth was so much warmer 
than it now is that the climate of Arctic regions was tropi- 
cal, and when the atmosphere was heavily laden with 
watery vapor and carbonic acid, was the age of a gigantic 
vegetation, the remains of which constitute our older 
coal-fields, some of them of great thickness and of vast 
extent. That the waters were swarming with inhabitants 
before what we know as land-animals appeared, and, 
further, that great sea-monsters and other amphibious 
animals preceded " cattle and beasts of the earth," 
geology testifies with equal distinctness. Thus it will be 
seen that science testifies not only to an order of crea- 
tion, but to an order, in its general outline, the same 
with that given by Moses. 

When Professor Huxley writes : " The oldest fossils in 
the Silurian rocks are exuvia of marine animals ; and if 
the view which is entertained by Principal Dawson and 
Dr. Carpenter respecting the nature of the eozoon (i.e., 
dawn-animal) be well founded, aquatic animals existed 
at a period as far antecedent to the deposition of the 
coal as the coal is from us ; inasmuch as the eozoon is 
met with in those Laurentian strata which lie at the 
bottom of the series of stratified rocks" (" New York 
Lectures on Evolution, "Lecture I.), and would have us 
hence infer that Moses is mistaken in representing vege- 
table life as antecedent to animal life ; he forgets " the 
immense deposits of carbon," in the form of graphite, 
" in the Laurentian, which would seem to bespeak a pro- 
fusion of plant life in the sea or on the land, or both, 
second to that of no other period that succeeded, except 
that of the great coal formation." (Dawson's u Earth 
and Man," p. 26.) 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 117 

§ 45. The Creation of Man, according to Moses. 

Moses' account of the creation of man is as follows — 
viz.: " And the Lord God formed man of the dust of 
the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of 
life ; and man became a living soul," literally, a creat- 
ure of life, or living creature. " And the Lord G-od 
caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept ; 
and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in- 
stead thereof. And the rib, which the Lord God had 
taken from man, made lie a woman, and brought her 
unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone 
of my bones, and flesh of my flesh : she shall be called 
Woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore 
shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall 
cleave unto his wife : and they shall be one flesh." 
(Gen. 2 : 7, 21-24.) In the first chapter of Genesis we 
have this additional statement respecting the creation of 
man : " And God said, Let us make man in our image, 
after our likeness : and let them have dominion over the 
fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over 
the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creep- 
ing thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created 
man in His own image, in the image of God created He 
him ; male and female created He them. And God 
blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and 
multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it : and 
have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the 
fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth 
upon the earth." (Gen. 1 : 26-28.) 

In this account of the creation of man there are four 
particulars worthy our special attention — viz. : (1) He is 
the last made of the inhabitants of our earth ; and with 
his making the work of the world's creation closes ; 



118 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

(2) in his creation God made bnt a single pair, from 
whom all of human kind must have descended by natural 
generation ; (3) the bodies of man and woman, though 
made alike out of previously existing material, are made, 
that of man out of " the dust of the ground ;" that of 
woman out of a rib taken from the body of man ; and 
this for the purpose of furnishing a most solemn sanc- 
tion to the marriage relation, and so, in the human race, 
establishing the family; (4) man was made in " the 
image of God," that he might have dominion over the 
work of God's hands. 

§ 4:6. The Creation of Man, according to Science. 

1. Man is the last made of the inhabitants of earth, 
and with his making the work of creation closes. " And 
on the seventh day God ended His work which He had 
made ; and He rested on the seventh day from all His 
work which He had made." (Gen. 2 : 2.) 

On this subject the Duke of Argyll writes : " The 
evidence of geology has always been that among all the 
creatures which have in succession been formed to live 
upon this earth, and enjoy it, man is the latest born. 
This great fact is still the fundamental truth in the his- 
tory of creation ; that history, as geology has revealed 
it, has been a history of successive creations and of suc- 
cessive destructions, old forms of life perishing and new 
forms appearing, so that the whole face of nature has 
been many times renewed. But until very lately it was 
supposed that these vast cycles of changes had been finally 
completed before man appeared. And as regards fresh 
creations, this supposition is still supported by the testi- 
mony of science. So far as we yet know, no new form 
of life has been created since the highest form was made. 
But it now appears that since that event many old forms 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 119 

have died. The cycle of creation has closed, but not the 
cycle of destruction. " (" Primeval Man," pp. 113, 114.) 

2. In his creation of man God made but a single 
pair, from whom all of human hind must have de- 
scended by natural generation. The unity of the 
human race, thus clearly asserted by Moses, is a doctrine 
which, within the last fifty years, has been assailed in 
such a way as to lead to a thorough re-investigation of 
the whole subject by some of the leading scientists of the 
day. 

Professor Cabell closes an exhaustive examination of 
the whole subject with the words : " The unity of the 
human race must be considered a fundamental ancLan 
accepted truth. Every department of knowledge has 
been searched for evidence, and all respond with an 
uniform testimony. The physical structure, constitution, 
and habits of the race — the mode in which it is produced, 
in which it exists, in which it perishes — everything that 
touches its mere animal existence, demonstrates the 
absolute certainty of its unity, so that no other general- 
ization of physiology is more clear and more sure. 
Rising one step, to the highest manifestation of man's 
physical organization — his use of language and the power 
of connected speech — the most profound survey of this 
most complex and tedious part of knowledge conducts 
the inquirer to no conclusion more indubitable than that 
there is a common origin, a common organization, a 
common nature, underlying and running through this 
endless variety of a common power, peculiar to the race, 
and to it alone. Thus a second science — philology — 
has borne its marvellous testimony. Rising one more 
step, and passing more completely to a higher region, 
we find the rational and moral nature of men of every 
age and kindred absolutely the same. Those great 



120 NATURE AND REVELATION". 

faculties by which, man alone — and yet by which every 
man — perceives that there is in things that distinction 
which we call true and false, and that other distinction 
which we call good and evil, upon which distinctions 
and which faculties rests at last the moral and intellect- 
ual destiny of the entire race, belonging to us as men, 
without which we are not men, with which we are the 
head of the visible creation of God. So has a third 
science delivered its testimony. If we rise another step, 
and survey man as he is gathered into families and tribes 
and nations, with an endless variety of development, we 
still behold the broad foundations of a common nature 
reposing^ under all — the grand principles of a common 
being ruling in the midst of all. So a fourth, and the 
youngest of the sciences, ethnology, brings her tribute. 
And now from this lofty summit survey the whole track 
of ages. In their length and in their breadth scrutinize 
the recorded annals of mankind. There is not one page 
on which one fact is written which favors the historical 
idea of a diversity of nature or origin, while the whole 
scope of human story involves, assumes, and proclaims, 
as the first and grandest historic truth, the absolute 
unity of the race." (" Unity of Mankind," pp, 285, 
286.) See also § 13. 

3. The bodies of man and woman, though made alike 
out of previously existing material, are made — that of 
man out of " the dust of the ground /" that of woman 
out of a rib taken from the body of man. And this 
for the purpose of furnishing a most solemn sanction to 
the marriage relation, and so in the human race to 
establish the family. On the Mosaic record of the crea- 
tion of woman Bishop Patrick remarks : " God did not 
form Eve out of the ground, as He had done Adam, but 
out of his side, that He might breed the greater love 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 121 

between him and her, as parts of the same whole. 
Whereby He also effectually recommended marriage to 
all mankind, as founded in nature." And on Moses' 
words, " And brought her unto the man,' ' he adds : " Not 
merely by conducting her to the place where Adam was ; 
but the Divine Majesty, which now appeared to Eve, 
presented and gave her to him to be his wife. God Him- 
self made the espousals — if I may so speak — between 
them, and joined them together in marriage. 
And by creating and joining together but one man and 
one woman in the beginning, intended that mankind 
should be so propagated, and not by polygamy." 
(Patrick's Commentary.) 

The sacredness of the marriage relation, and so of the 
family, all history declares to be fundamental to progress 
in civilization ; and with equal distinctness declares polyg- 
amy to be fatal to national prosperity. The marriage 
relation, such as Moses describes as instituted of God, is 
a thing utterly unknown among savages. It is a marked 
characteristic of the savage to despise and degrade the 
female sex. The condition of woman among them, with 
rare exceptions, is no better than that of a slave or beast 
of burden. Indeed, so intolerable is it, that it is not an 
uncommon occurrence for female infants to be put to 
death as soon as they are born, and that by the hands 
of their own mothers. It is only among the most highly 
civilized nations, and as a result of that civilization, that 
woman has recovered the rank and station which, accord- 
ing to this account of Moses, God gave her in the begin- 
ning. These facts furnish a good and sufficient reason for 
God's departure from the common order of creation in 
His making of woman. Certainly, the story must be 
regarded as a very strange invention — if it was an inven- 
tion — on the part of a "semi-barbarous Hebrew," as 



122 NATURE AND REVELATION". 

Professor Huxley would have us believe that Moses was. 
In the circumstances of the case, " the invention is more 
incredible than the fact." 

4. Man was made in "the image of God" that he 
might have dominion over the work of God's hands. 
Without attempting a full and particular exposition of 
the phrase, " In our image, after our likeness," I remark 
this much, at the least, is implied therein, that man 
was intended and fitted to occupy the position of " the 
lord of creation ;" and to this end he was endowed 
with powers and faculties very different from and greatly 
superior to those of other creatures. 

On this point Professor Huxley writes : " There is 
no one who estimates more highly than I do the dignity 
of human nature and the width of the gulf in intellect- 
ual and moral matters which lies between man and the 
whole of the lower creation." (" Origin of Species," 
Lecture IV.) 

Max Miiller writes : " However much the frontiers 
of the animal kingdom have been pushed forward, so 
that the line of demarcation between man and the lower 
animals seemed at one time to depend on a mere fold in 
the brain, there is one barrier which no one has yet 
ventured to touch — the barrier of language. We cannot 
tell as yet what language is. It may be a production of 
nature, a work of human art, or a Divine gift. Bat to 
whatever sphere it belongs, it would seem to stand 
unsurpassed —nay, unequalled in it by anything else. If 
it be a production of Nature, it is her last and crowning 
production, which she reserved for man alone. If it be 
a work of human art, it would seem to lift the human 
artist almost to the level of a Divine Creator. If it be 
the gift of God, it is God's greatest gift ; for through it 
God speaks to man, and man speaks to God in worship, 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 123 

prayer, and meditation." (Max Miiller, as quoted in 
Jamieson/s Commentary.) 

Professor Dana writes : " In the appearance of man 
the system of life, in progress through the ages, reached 
its completion, and the animal structure its highest per- 
fection. Another higher is not within the range of our 
conception. For the vertebrate type, which began dur- 
ing the paleozoic, in the prone or horizontal fish, 
becomes erect in man, and thus completes, as Agassiz 
has observed, the possible changes in the series to its 
last term. An erect body and an erect forehead admit of 
no step beyond. But besides this, man's whole structure 
declares his intellectual and spiritual nature. His fore- 
limbs are not organs of locomotion, as they are in all 
other mammalians ; they have passed from the locomo- 
tive to the cephalic series, being made to subserve the 
purposes of the head ; and this transfer is in accordance 
with a grand law in nature, which is at the basis of grade 
and development. The cephalization of the animal has 
been the goal in all progress ; and in man we mark its 
highest possible triumph. Man was the first being that 
was not finished on reaching adult growth, but was pro- 
vided with powers for indefinite expansion, a will for a 
life work, and boundless aspirations to lead to an end- 
less improvement. He was the first being capable of an 
intelligent survey of Nature, and comprehension of her 
laws ; the first capable of augmenting his strength by 
bending nature to his service, rendering thereby a weak 
body stronger than all animal force ; the first capable of 
deriving happiness from truth and goodness ; of appre- 
hending eternal right ; of reaching toward a knowledge 
of self and of God ; the first, therefore, capable of con- 
scious obedience or disobedience of moral law, and the 
first subject to debasement through his appetites and 



124 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

moral nature. There is, hence, in man a spiritual 
element in which the brute has no share. His power of 
indefinite progress, his thoughts and desires, that look 
onward even beyond time, his recognition of spiritual 
existence and of a divinity above — all evince a nature 
that partakes of the infinite and divine. Man is linked 
to the past through the system of life, of which he is the 
last, the completing creation. But, unlike other species 
of that closing system of the past (significantly the zoic 
era of geological history), he, through his spiritual 
nature, is far more intimately connected with the open- 
ing future." (Dana's " Geology," pp. 578, 579.) 

§47. The Age of the World. 

"When geologists first claimed for our earth a far 
greater age than the six or seven thousand years which 
had long been believed to measure the interval between 
its creation and the present day, the claim was generally 
disallowed, on the ground of the uncertain, often vision- 
ary, character of the speculations in which they habitually 
indulged. But the geology of to-day is very different 
from the geology of a century ago. As now pursued it 
is as thoroughly Baconian in its methods, and its con- 
clusions are as worthy of credit, as those of any other of 
the sciences. Starting with the unquestionable truth that 
our earth is all the time undergoing change in some part 
or other through the operation of such agencies as river- 
currents and floods, volcanoes and earthquakes, the opera- 
tion of coral polyps in building up reefs, and of stone- 
boring mollusks and waves in tearing them to pieces 
again, and postulating the operation of these agencies in 
the past substantially as in the present, the geologist seeks 
to construct a physical history of the earth, to answer the 
question, How has the earth come to have its present 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 125 

form and structure ? The legitimacy of such a method 
as this no thoughtful person can question. And among 
the most certain conclusions to which this method leads 
us is the one that the age of our world is vastly greater 
than six or seven thousand years. 

This conclusion is based upon such well-ascertained 
facts as these — viz. : (1) Continents and sea-bottoms have 
changed places more than once in ages past, as is proved 
by the occurrence of fossil corals and mollusks far up on 
the mountain -sides and on the high -lands of the earth ; 
and this must have occurred before man began his life 
here, as it would have been impossible for that life to 
have continued through such convulsions. (2) Several 
different systems of organic life have, in succession, 
existed upon the earth, and passed away before man was 
brought into being. This is proved by the fact that these 
several systems have left their fossil remains entombed in 
the rock-strata, with no human remains among them. 
(3) The great thickness of the fossiliferous rock-strata 
in which no human remains occur — in Pennsylvania forty 
thousand feet (Dana's " Geology," p. 145) — plainly 
demands a long period for their deposition and their 
subsequent subjection to all the changes which they have 
evidently undergone. 

It is true, as the Duke of Argyll remarks, that 
" chronology is of two kinds : first, time measured by 
years, and, secondly, time measured only by an ascertained 
order or succession of events. The one may be called 
time-absolute, the other time-relative. Now, among all 
the sciences which afford us evidence on the antiquity of 
man one, and one only, gives us any knowledge of time- 
absolute, and that is history. From all the others we 
can gather only the less definite information of time-rela- 
tive. They can tell us of nothing more than of the order 



126 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

in which certain events took place. But of the length 
of interval between those events neither archaeology nor 
geology nor ethnology can tell us anything." ("Pri- 
meval Man," pp. 78, 79.) 

It is true also that geologists of high standing in their 
profession have blundered egregiously when they have 
attempted to state geological time in years — e.g., Sir 
Charles Lyell, when he fixed the age of the Mississippi 
Delta at one hundred thousand years. In doing this 
he assumed that the rate of formation of the delta had 
been uniform for all time, while the very nature of the 
agency — that of the river current and floods — by which 
it must have been formed, taken in connection with 
what geology teaches respecting the formation of the 
Mississippi Yalley itself, ought to have satisfied him that 
such could not possibly have been the case. The Missis- 
sippi Yalley was formed originally by the upheaval of the 
two great mountain ranges which bound it on the east 
and west. As these mountain ranges, whether upheaved 
rapidly or slowly, must have emerged covered with a 
great thickness of silt and mud from the sea-bottom, the 
amount of delta material washed away by rain and flood, 
and carried down by the river current, in a given time, 
must have been far greater when the valley was first 
formed than it is now. It should not surprise us, then, 
that Lyell's one hundred thousand years have, in the 
hands of later and more cautious reasoners, dwindled to 
four thousand four hundred. 

Notwithstanding all this, the general conclusion remains 
unquestionable, that our world was in being long be- 
fore man was created ; and as a necessary consequence, 
its age must be vastly greater than the six or seven 
thousand years once allowed. In view of this fact, the 
question at once presents itself, How is this great age to 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 127 

be harmonized with the record contained in the first 
chapters of Genesis ? 

§ 48. The Popular Method of Reconciliation. 

The method of reconciling the conclusions of geology, 
especially its conclusion respecting the great age of the 
world, with the statements of the first chapters of 
Genesis most popular with Christian scientists in our 
day, is one which assumes that the word day in these 
chapters is to be understood not in the sense of a period 
of twenty-four hours, but in the sense of an age, or long 
period of time, characterized by something peculiar to it. 

That the Hebrew word yom, here translated day, is 
often used in this wider sense in the Scriptures is unques- 
tionable. " As in the day of temptation in the wilder- 
ness" (Psalm 95 : 8), where the day was one of forty 
years. " In that day there shall be a fountain opened to 
the house of David, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem 
for sin and for uncleanness," where the day covers the 
whole Christian dispensation. And in this very cos- 
mogony of Moses (Gen. 2:4): " In the day that the 
Lord God made the earth and the heavens," it evi- 
dently covers the whole period of the cosmogony. Un- 
derstood in this sense, Moses' days of creation correspond 
to the eras of geology ; and the " morning and evening" 
are but the opening and closing portions of those eras. 

Adopting this interpretation of the word day, Professor 
Dana writes: " The account" — i.e., Moses' account — 
"recognizes in creation two great eras, each of three 
days — an inorganic and an organic. 

" Each of these eras opens with the appearance of 
light ; the first, light cosmical ; the second, light from 
the sun, for the special use of the earth. 

" Each era ends in a day of two great works, the two 



128 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

shown to be distinct by being severally pronounced good. 
On the third day — that closing the inorganic era — there 
was, first, the dividing of the land from the waters, and 
afterward the creation of vegetation, or the institution of 
a kingdom of life, a work widely diverse from all preced- 
ing it in the era. So on the sixth day, terminating the 
organic era, there was, first, the creation of mammals, 
and then a second far greater work, totally new in its 
grandest elements — the creation of man. 
" The arrangement is, then, as follows : 

" I. The Inorganic Era. 

" 1st Day. — Light cosmical. 

" 2d Day. — The earth divided from the fluid around 
it, or individualized. 

t n j 1. Outlining of the land and water, 
^' \ 2. Creation of vegetation. 

" II. The Organic Era. 

" 4th Day. — Ligh*t from the sun. 
" 5th Day. — Creation of the lower orders of animals. 
u , j. ( 1. Creation of mammals. 
^' \ 2. Creation of man. 

" In addition, the last day of each era includes one 
work typical of the era, and another related to it in 
essential points, but also prophetic of the future. 
Vegetation, while, for physical reasons, a part of the 
creation of the third day, was also prophetic of the future 
organic era, in which the progress of life was the grand 
characteristic. The record thus accords with the funda- 
mental principle in history, that the characteristic of an 
age has its beginnings with the age preceding. So, again, 
man, while like other mammals in structure, even to the 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 120 

homologies of every bone and muscle, was endowed with 
a spiritual nature, which looks forward to another era, 
that of spiritual existence. The seventh day — the day of 
rest from the work of creation — is man's period of prep- 
aration for the new existence ; and it is to promote this 
special end that, in strict parallelism, the Sabbath follows 
man's six days of work. " (Dana's " Geology," pp. 769, 
770.) 

A harmony of genesis and geology, substantially the 
same with that given above, is adopted by the late 
Professor A. Guyot, in his recently published " Crea- 
tion," to which I would refer the reader who may wish 
for further details. 

§ 49. A Second Method of Reconciliation. 

A second method of reconciling the conclusions of 
geology, especially its conclusion respecting the great age 
of the world, with the statements of the first chapters of 
Genesis, is, to understand Gen. 1 : 1 — "In the begin- 
ning God created the heaven and the earth" — to refer to 
a period long anterior to that of the events recorded in 
the subsequent portions of the chapters ; that Moses 
makes this statement for the purpose of teaching us who 
was the Creator of all things, and who, therefore, was the 
proper object of man's adoration and worship ; that 
then the long ages demanded by geology followed 
ages in which the rock-strata, with all their fossils, were 
deposited, with the exception of those in which human 
remains occur ; and of these Moses says nothing, for 
the sufficient reason that their history has nothing to do 
with the religious history of man ; that when God begins 
the subsequent setting in order of the earth which is to 
fit it for the inhabitation of man, Moses resumes the nar- 
rative in the words, " And the earth was without form 



130 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

and void " {waste and void, New Version), u and darkness 
was upon the face of the deep" — thus describing the 
chaotic condition to which the earth was reduced at the 
time — u and the spirit of God moved upon" (was brood- 
ing upon, margin) " the face of the waters." Then fol- 
lows an account of God's preparation of the earth as a 
dwelling-place for man, and the re-stocking it with plants 
and animals adapted to its improved condition ; many of 
these plants and animals being the same in kind with 
those existing in preceding ages, others entirely new ; 
and then the story of man's creation is given us, w T ith 
which the cosmogony properly closes. 

The idea that Gen. 1 : 1 — " In the beginning God 
created the heaven and the earth" — refers to a period 
long anterior to that of the events recorded in the sub- 
sequent portions of the chapter is not a new idea, first 
suggested by the wish to make the narrative of Moses 
conform to the demands of geology. It was advocated 
by Augustine and Theodoret among the early Christian 
Fathers, and among modern commentators by Bishop 
Patrick, who died in 1707. Pie writes : " How long all 
things continued in mere confusion, after the chaos was 
created, before light was extracted out of it, we are not 
told. It might be (for anything here revealed) a great 
while ; and all that time the mighty spirit was making 
such motions in it as prepared, disposed, and ripened 
every part of it, for such productions as were to appear 
successively in such spaces of time as are here and after- 
ward mentioned by Moses, who informs us, that after 
things were so digested and made ready (by long fer- 
mentation, perhaps) to be wrought into form, God pro- 
duced every day, for six days together, some creature or 
other, till all was finished, of which light was the very 
first." (Patrick's Commentary on Gen. 1:5.) 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 131 

1. One objection to this explanation of the Mosaic 
record is, it requires us to believe in the immediate 
exercise of creative power, accomplishing in a brief space 
what in ordinary circumstances would require a long 
time — the re-stocking of the earth with all the vast variety 
of animals in the space of two days — a work which had 
previously occupied ages in perfecting. In answer to 
this we say : In creation there is implied a direct inter- 
vention of Divine power in the affairs of the world ; and 
in other instances where such intervention has occurred 
this same peculiarity often appears. In our Lord's mir- 
acle of stilling the tempest, the record is : " There arose 
a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was 
covered with the waves. . . . Then He arose and 
rebuked the winds and the sea ; and there was a great 
calm." (Matt. 8 : 24-26.) Here the Divine word of 
power accomplished in a moment what in ordinary cir- 
cumstances it would have required hours to effect. In 
his miracle of turning water into wine at Cana we have 
an illustration of the same truth in closer analogy with 
the case under consideration. " He who does every year 
prepare the wine in the grape," writes Trench, " caus- 
ing it to drink up and expand with the moisture of earth 
and heaven, to take this up into itself, and transmute it 
into its own nobler juices, did now gather together all 
this slow process into the act of a single moment, and 
accomplish in an instant what ordinarily He does not ac- 
complish but in many months." ("Notes on the 
Miracles," p. 91.) 

2. A second objection to this explanation is, that it 
requires us to accept as true the destruction of all the 
plants and animals — certainly of all that could not sur- 
vive in the midst of the chaos described in verse 2 — 
existing upon the earth at the close of the geological era 



132 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

immediately preceding that of man, and a re-stocking of 
the earth in connection with man's creation ; a supposi- 
tion which, it is said, involves an extravagant expendi- 
ture of power on the part of God irreconcilable with our 
ideas of His perfect skill and wisdom. To this it may be 
answered : 

(1) We know far too little of the elements of the prob- 
lem under examination to pronounce a confident judg- 
ment upon it. In the case of a tree, the leaves are the 
active living portions of the organism ; the trunk and 
branches are comparatively inert ; and this to such an 
extent that some eminent botanists have been almost 
ready to treat the leaf as the individual plant, and the 
tree when in full leaf as a colony or nation of plants. 
ISTow, every year, the myriads of leaves on a tree die, and 
are cast aside, to be replaced by new leaves the succeed- 
ing season. At first sight there seems to be here as ex- 
travagant an expenditure of power as in the case we are 
considering. Why not surfer the old leaves to remain, 
and retaining their vitality, do the life-work of the tree 
year after year ? To this question the botanist answers : 
The organism of the leaf, which in the spring is fall of 
vigor and in perfect working order, in doing the work 
of a single summer becomes clogged and worn out, and 
thus unfitted to continue the work for a longer time ; 
and for this reason, in the Wise economy of nature, it is 
thrown aside, and a new leaf takes its place. Something 
like this same law would seem to obtain in organic nature 
at large. " There are certain conceptions," writes the 
Duke of Argyll, " which seem to rise unbidden in the 
mind from the facts which geology has revealed touching 
the history of creation. One of these is that each new 
organic form, or each new variety of birth, seems always 
to have been introduced with a wonderful energy of life. 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 133 

. . . The vigor which prevails in the youth of an 
individual is but the type of the vigor which has always 
prevailed in new and rising species. All the complex 
influences which led to their being born led also to their 
being fat and flourishing. That which caused them to 
arise at all must have had the effect of causing them to 
arise in strength. The condition of all the lower races 
of men is in absolute contrast with everything which this 
law demands. Everywhere and in everything they 
exhibit all the characteristics of an energy which is spent, 
of a force which has declined, of a vitality which has 
been arrested." ("The Unity of Nature," pp. 428, 
429.) If this be true, that organic forms and species of 
plants and animals, like the individuals of which they 
are made up, in the ordinary course of nature grow old 
and unfitted for their work, and need to be replaced by 
new creations, may not the close of the era immediately 
preceding the creation of man have been one of these 
periods of necessary change when that which had become 
old needed to be replaced by the new f 

(2) The destruction of the then existing plants and 
animals would seem to be necessarily involved in the 
breaking up of the surface strata of the earth, and so 
the necessity of a new creation when order is restored. 
This breaking up of the earth's surface, and a breaking 
up immediately preceding the creation of man, is a mat- 
ter of supreme importance to man, if he is to lead the 
life of a civilized being upon the earth. But for this 
the riches of the earth — the vast coal fields of the carbon- 
iferous age, the granites, the sandstones, and other valu- 
able building materials, and most of the metallic ores, 
would have lain forever beyond his reach. In attempt- 
ing to reconcile the destruction of plants and animals 
and the new creation supposed with the wisdom of God, 



134 NATURE AKD REVELATION. 

we have then, in the facts just stated, a second ground 
on which we may rest — the ground that " the end justi- 
fies the means. " 

3. To this explanation it may be objected that the 
order of creation as given in the first chapter of Genesis 
— viz. : first, plants, then fish and flying creatures, and, 
lastly, land animals — is that which the records of the fos- 
siliferous rocks declares to have been the order observed 
when those rocks were deposited, and so of the long ages 
of which this explanation supposes Moses to say nothing. 
This is true, in general, though in the present state of 
geological science it cannot be regarded as established in 
all the particulars that Professor Guyot in his " Crea- 
tion " would seem to imply. This order, in general, 
was rendered necessary by the way in which the original 
chaos was developed into the cosmos of the period. If 
our earth was a second time reduced to a condition of 
chaos, and then, developing under the operation of crea- 
tive power in the space of six natural days into our pres- 
ent cosmos, is to be restocked, the same reasons which 
required a certain order in the first creation will, of 
necessity, require the same order to be observed in the 
new creation. 

4. That the earth has been subject to great convul- 
sions at various points in its history is beyond all reason- 
able question. " It is perfectly certain," writes Professor 
Huxley, " that at a comparatively recent period of the 
world's history — the cretaceous epoch — none of the great 
physical features which at present mark the surface of 
the globe existed. It is certain that the Rocky Mountains 
were not. It is certain that the Himalaya Mountains were 
not. It is certain that the Alps and Pyrenees had no 
existence. The evidence is of the plainest possible char- 
acter ; and it is simply this : we find raised up on the 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 135 

flanks of these mountains, elevated by the forces of up- 
heaval which have given rise to them, masses of cretace- 
ous rocks, which formed the bottom of the sea before 
those mountains existed. It is therefore clear that the 
elevatory forces which gave rise to the mountains operated 
subsequently to the cretaceous epoch, and that the 
mountains themselves are largely made up of the materials 
deposited in the sea which once occupied their place. 
As we go back in time, we meet with constant alternations 
of sea and land, of estuary and open ocean." ("New 
York Lectures on Evolution," Lecture I.) At how 
recent a period great changes in the surface of the earth 
have occurred we cannot say with certainty ; but this I 
know from my own personal observations, that on the 
western flank of the Alleghany Mountains in Virginia the 
fossil corals and gorgonias and sponges are of species 
now living in the Gulf of Mexico. This explanation, 
then, does not involve anything in the present condition 
of the earth's surface at variance with ascertained facts. 

To those who adopt it, one great recommendation of 
the explanation we have been considering is, that it har- 
monizes all that geology demands respecting the age of 
the world with the Mosaic account of creation as effected 
in six days, understanding those days to have been nat- 
ural days of twenty -four hours each. This interpretation 
of the term day, it is said, is a more natural one than 
that which understands it to mean an indefinite period, 
an era, and better agrees with the terms in which Moses 
records the institution of the Sabbath : " And God blessed 
the seventh day, and sanctified it ; because that in it He 
rested from all His works which God created and made" 
(Gen. 2:3); and more especially with the language of the 
Fourth Commandment — " Eemember the Sabbath day 
to keep it holy, . . . for in six days the Lord made 



136 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and 
rested the seventh day ; wherefore the Lord blessed the 
Sabbath day, and hallowed it." (Ex. 20 : 8, 11.) 

§ 50. The Proper Position for the Christian Apologist. 

Does the reader ask, Which of these methods of recon- 
ciling the cosmogony of Moses with the demands of 
geology as to the great age of the earth shall I adopt ? I 
answer, Neither of them as a finality. Either of them 
will fully answer the purposes of Christian apology, will 
suffice to show that there is no real conflict on this point 
between the Mosaic cosmogony and the fairly established 
conclusions of the geologist. The time for making out 
a complete " harmony" of the two has not yet come. 
That the reader may see more distinctly the exact nature 
of the difficulty in making out a harmony, I would ask 
him to remember that the Mosaic cosmogony is given us 
in the language of common life — a language in which 
things are described as they appear (§ 4), while the geo- 
logical record is in the language of science ; and a har- 
mony of the two involves the correct translation of the 
one into the language of the other. 

The nature of the work to be done will be best appre- 
hended by the examination of a particular instance in 
which a probable harmony has been established. In 
Joshua 10 : 13, 14 we read : " So the sun stood still in 
the midst of the heaven" (" in the division of the heavens 
above the horizon" (Push), and so, apparently, " upon 
Gibeon"), " and hasted not to go down about a whole 
day. And there was no day like that before it or after 
it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man : 
for the Lord fought for Israel." 

On the expression in our English Bible, " And hasted 
not to go down about a whole day," Professor Bush, who 






THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 137 

forty years ago was considered the finest Hebrew scholar 
in America, writes : " This should be \ hasted not to go 
down as at the perfect day ' — i.e. , as it naturally does when 
the day is finished, when the ordinary space of a day has 
elapsed. This we conceive to be the true force of the 
original, though aware that it requires one to be ac- 
quainted with the Hebrew in order to feel the force of 
the evidence in favor of such a rendering. Such an one, 
however, upon turning to the original of Ex. 31 : 18 ; 
Deut. 16 : 6 ; 24 : 13 ; Ps. 73 : 19, will find, if we mistake 
not, ample proof of the correctness of this interpretation. 
The meaning, as we understand it, is not that the day 
was miraculously lengthened out to the extent of twelve 
hours, or another whole day, but simply that when the 
ordinary duration of a day was completed, the sun still 
delayed his setting, but for how long a time we are not 
informed ; long enough, however, we may presume, for 
fully accomplishing the object for which the miracle was 
granted." (Bush on Joshua, in loo.) "And Dr. A. 
Clarke writes : "And the sun stood still in the (upper) 
hemisphere of the heaven, and hasted not to go down, 
when the day was complete — that is, though the day was 
then complete, the sun being in the horizon, the line 
that to the eye constituted the mid -heaven, yet it hasted 
not to go down, was miraculously sustained in its then 
almost setting position ; and this seems still more evident 
from the moon appearing at that time, which it is not 
reasonable to suppose could be visible in the glare of light 
occasioned by a noonday sun." (Clarke's Commen- 
tary, in loo.) Thus much toward a correct rendering 
of the Bible record. 

Turning now to the translation of this record, written 
in the language of common life, into the language of 
science. Inasmuch as the ordinary way in which the sun 



138 NATURE AND REVELATION". 

and moon are made to rise and set is by the revolution 
of the earth upon its axis, and assuming, as our fathers 
did, that this was the only way, the proper translation 
would be — so the earth stopped in its revolution upon its 
axis for several hours toward the close of the day. To 
the credibility of such an event as this infidel scientists 
have made two objections, perplexing to the older com- 
mentators — viz.: (1) That had such a day occurred it 
must have extended over half the globe, and that the 
half in which all the civilized nations of antiquity were 
embraced ; and so we have a right to expect that some 
notice of it would have reached us from other sources, 
especially as the Chaldeans and Egyptians were noted for 
their devotion to astronomy ; and (2) that when we take 
into account all that science teaches us is necessarily in- 
volved in stopping the revolution of the earth upon its 
axis, even for an hour, we must regard this as the most 
stupendous miracle recorded in the Scriptures ; and it 
has been intimated that had Joshua understood the true 
nature of our solar system, or had he written under in- 
spiration of a Being who did understand it, he would 
never have made such a record as this. 

Within the present century scientists have learned 
that the revolution of the earth upon its axis is not the 
only means by which a body like the sun may be, in ap- 
pearance, raised above the horizon. What is termed 
mirage, caused by the coming in of a dense stratum of 
air at some distance above the earth's surface, will pro- 
duce this same effect. " The particular form of mirage 
known as looming consists in an excessive apparent 
elevation of the object. A most remarkable case of this 
sort occurred on the 26th of July, 1798, at Hastings. 
From this place the French coast is fifty miles distant ; 
yet from the seaside the whole coast of France from 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 139 

Calais to near Dieppe was distinctly visible^ and con- 
tinued so for three hours." ("Chambers's Encyclo- 
paedia. ") In the summer of 1856 the author witnessed a 
mirage on Lake Michigan, by which the Manitou Islands, 
some twentj miles distant from his point of observation, 
were raised, in appearance, thirty degrees, or two hours, 
above the horizon. 

Knowing these facts, were I to attempt to translate 
the record of Joshua's miracle into the language of 
science, I would not write, So the earth stopped in its 
revolution upon its axis, but so the Lord caused a mirage 
by which the sun and moon were made to remain for a 
season, in appearance, above the horizon ; and thus 
lengthened out the day, for the Lord fought for Israel. 
This interpretation does not in any way affect the truly 
miraculous character of the event recorded ; but it does 
explain a particular recorded, otherwise inexplicable — 
viz. : that the moon as well as the sun remained above the 
horizon ; and it effectually answers the cavils (1) that 
this remarkable day is not mentioned by the Chaldean 
or Egyptian astronomers, inasmuch as a lengthening of 
the day produced in this way would not extend many 
miles from its centre at G-ibeon ; and (2) the stupendous 
character of the event disappears, and the miracle takes 
its place naturally in the class of miracles recorded in 
the Old Testament Scriptures. 

We have thus made out a probable " harmony" 
between this record of Joshua and the demands of 
science, such as was impossible a century ago. And 
this has been done (1) by correcting the English ver- 
sion in the light of a more careful study of the Hebrew 
original ; and (2) by science, in its progress, making 
us acquainted with truth unknown to our fathers ; not 
that our fathers never witnessed a mirage, but they 



140 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

knew not how to explain it — could not tell how it was 
produced. 

That the authorized English version of Genesis is not 
perfect all will admit. The new version, by a very slight 
change, the correctness of which no one will question 
— viz. : the substitution in ch. 1:21 of u great sea- 
monsters" for " great whales" — has entirely removed an 
alleged discrepancy of the Mosaic cosmogony, as inter- 
preted by Dana and Guyot, with the cosmogony of 
science. ~No longer ago than 1876 Professor Huxley 
wrote : " If it be true that all varieties of fishes, and the 
great whales, and the like made their appearance on the 
fifth day, we ought to find the remains of these animals 
in the older rocks — in those which were deposited before 
the carboniferous epoch. Fishes we do find in consider- 
able numbers and variety ; but the great whales are 
absent." (" New York Lectures on Evolution," Lecture 
I.) The whale, as we now use the term, is a warm- 
blooded mammal, and its remains do not occur in the 
strata Professor Huxley refers to ; but the remains of 
" great sea-monsters" do, as every geologist knows. That 
the cosmogony of geology is yet very incomplete, and 
very uncertain, too, especially as regards the element of 
time, every intelligent geologist will admit. To be con- 
vinced of this, one needs but to read Professor Huxley's 
address before the British Geological Society, published 
in his volume of " Lay Sermons," more particularly the 
part of it concerning " geological cotemporaneity." 

In such circumstances the construction of a perfect 
" harmony " of the two records is out of the question. 
What we can do, and all we can safely do at present is, 
to collate the two from time to time, carefully distin- 
guishing between the established truths of science and 
the unproved hypotheses of enthusiastic scientists, noting 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 141 

the points in which they agree, and quietly leaving 
seeming discrepancies to be explained in the future. 
This is the course which the author has pursued for many 
years ; and in those years he has seen science, in more 
instances than one, adopt the very doctrines of the 
Mosaic cosmogony which at one time it denounced — e.g., 
the doctrines of " the unity of mankind " (§ 46) and the 
laws of " biogenesis" and u homogenesis." (§ 44.) 

Creation vs. Evolution. 

The Mosaic cosmogony has long been understood to 
embody the doctrine of creation, as contradistinguished 
from that of evolution. As already remarked, " the 
hypothesis of evolution, taken in its most limited range, 
as excluding inorganic nature on the one hand, and so 
recognizing the fact that a great gulf separates between 
the non-living and the living, and excluding also man, 
on the other hand, and so recognizing the fact that an 
impassable gulf separates the brute from immortal man 
' made in the image of God,' and understanding it as sim- 
ply ' a mode of creation,' ... is not irreconcilable with 
the Bible account of the origin of plants and animals " 
(see § 37) ; but, certainly, it does not furnish as natural 
an interpretation as the old theory of creation does. 
As evolution in this form is persistently urged upon our 
acceptance by some who firmly believe in the divine in- 
spiration of Genesis, our discussion of the Mosaic cosmog- 
ony would be incomplete without some examination of 
this claim ; and to this we now ask the reader's attention. 

§ 51. Huxley's Objection to Creation as Supernatural. 

" The hypotheses respecting the origin of species which 
profess to stand upon a scientific basis, and as such alone 



142 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

demand serious attention, are of two kinds. The one, 
the ' special creation ' hypothesis, presumes every species 
to have originated from one or more stocks, these not 
being the result of the modification of any other form of 
living matter, or arising by natural agencies, but being 
produced as such by a supernatural creative act. The 
other, the so-called ' transmutation ' hypothesis, considers 
that all existing species are the result of pre-existing 
species, and those of their predecessors, by agencies 
similar to those which at the present day produce va- 
rieties and races, and therefore in an altogether natural 
way ; and it is a probable, though not a necessary con- 
sequence of this hypothesis, that all living beings have 
arisen from a single stock. With respect to the origin of 
this primitive stock or stocks, the doctrine of the origin 
of species is obviously not necessarily concerned. The 
transmutation hypothesis, for example, is perfectly con- 
sistent with either the conception of a special creation of 
the primitive germ or with the supposition of its hav- 
ing arisen, as a modification of inorganic matter, by 
natural causes." (" Lay Sermons," pp. 279, 280.) 

1. Professor Huxley has here correctly stated the 
question between the hypotheses of creation and evolution 
as a question concerning the origin of species. Varieties 
are constantly being produced under the operation of 
changes of climate, and all the varied agencies we em- 
brace under the general name of " cultivation ;" and 
they are constantly disappearing, too, when neglected, 
under the operation of the general law of " reversion to 
type." The appearance and disappearance of varieties 
is taking place, from time to time, under our eyes ; and 
though but imperfectly understood as yet, it has long 
been a subject of study to man. Not so with species. 
The appearance of a new species man has never seen. 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 143 

" Some varieties of form," writes the Duke of Argyll, 
" are effected in a few animals by domestication and by 
constant care in the selection of peculiarities transmissi- 
ble to the young. But these variations are all within 
certain limits, and wherever human care relaxes or is 
abandoned the old forms return, and the selected char- 
acters disappear. The founding of new forms by the 
union of different species, even when standing in close 
natural relation to each other, is absolutely forbidden by 
the sentence of sterility which nature pronounces and en- 
forces upon all hybrid offspring. And so it results that 
man has never seen the origin of any species. Creation 
by birth is the only kind of creation he has ever seen ; 
and from this kind of creation he has never seen a new 
species come." ("Primeval Man," pp. 39, 40.) 

In the Mosaic cosmogony creation, as we have seen, 
is of two kinds — viz. : the making out of nothing, as in 
his words, " In the beginning God created the heaven 
and the earth,' 5 and the making out of pre-existing 
materials, as in his words, " God created man in His 
own image," of which creation he afterward says, " And 
the Lord God formed man of the dust of the earth. 5 ' It 
is with creation in the latter sense alone we have to do at 
present ; and in this sense creation is just as natural a 
way of originating a species as evolution is. If man has 
never seen a species originated by creation, neither has 
he ever seen a species originated by evolution. The 
origination of species, in whatever way it has been 
effected, belongs to an era that is long passed. The 
testimony of science on this point is at one with that of 
Moses. (§ 46.) If all have seen new individuals evolved, 
developed, from a living germ, under the operation of 
vital forces, so have all seen new individuals created out 
of inorganic matter, " the dust of the earth," under the 



144 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

operation of these same vital forces. No phenomenon is 
more familiar than that of making a plant, in all the per- 
fection of its completed, living structure, out of water, 
carbonic acid, and ammonia. 

On Professor Huxley's statement, that creation is 
supernatural, we remark, creation is supernatural only 
on the condition that we banish God from nature. The 
term supernatural, as used by Spencer, Huxley, and other 
writers of the class to which they belong, is " in the 
highest degree ambiguous and deceptive. It assumes 
that the system of ' nature ' in which we live and of 
which we form a part is limited to purely physical 
agencies, linked together by nothing but mechanical 
necessity. There might indeed be no harm in this limi- 
tation of the word nature if it could possibly be adhered 
to. But it is not possible to adhere to it, and that for 
the best of all reasons, because even inanimate nature, 
as we habitually see it and are obliged to speak of it, is 
not a system which gives us the idea of being governed 
and guided by mechanical necessity. No wonder men 
lind it difficult to believe in the supernatural, if by the 
supernatural they mean an agency which is nowhere pres- 
ent in the visible and intelligible universe, or is not 
implicitly represented and continually reflected there ; 
for indeed, in this sense, no Christian can believe in the 
supernatural, in a creation from which the creator has 
been banished, or has withdrawn himself. On the other 
hand, if by the supernatural we mean an agency which, 
while ever present in the material and intelligible universe, 
is not confined to it, but transcends it, then indeed the 
difficulty is not in believing it, but in disbelieving it. 
No man can really hold that the material system which 
is visible or intelligible to us is anything more than a 
fragment of a part. No man can believe that its existing 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 145 

arrangements of matter and force are self-caused, self- 
originated, and self -sustained. It is not possible, there- 
fore, so to ' crib, cabin, and confine ' our conceptions of 
nature as to exclude elements which essentially belong 
to what is called the supernatural. And there is another 
reason why it is impossible to adhere to such conceptions 
of the natural, and that is, that it would compel us to 
exclude the mind of man, and indeed the lesser minds of 
all living things, from our scientific definitions of nature, 
and to establish an absolute and rigorous separation 
between all of these and the world in which they move 
and act. We have seen not only how impracticable such 
a separation is, but how false it is to the facts of science. 
This same condemnation must fall on every conception 
of the universe which assumes this separation as not only 
important, but fundamental. Yet this is the very separa- 
tion on which those philosophers absolutely depend who 
condemn what they call the supernatural in our concep- 
tions and explanations of the world." (" Unity of 
Nature," pp. 274, 275.) 

§ 52. Huxley's Objection to Creation as Subject to no 

Law. 

" A phenomenon is explained when it is shown to be a 
case of some general law of nature ; but the supernatural 
interposition of the Creator can, by the nature of the 
case, exemplify no law ; and if species have arisen in 
this way, it is absurd to attempt to discuss their origin." 
(" Lay Sermons," p. 282.) 

Creation, if it be the work of an almighty and wise 
creator, and wrought with a special end in view — and 
such is the character of the creation which is generally 
believed to be taught in the Mosaic cosmogony — is as 
fully subject to law as evolution can possibly be. The 



146 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

proof of this statement is to be found in the fact that it 
furnishes us with as simple and complete an explanation 
of " the gradual advance in the type of living creatures 
and the natural grouping of plants and animals as any 
system of evolution can." 

Let us examine a case of creation — creation in the 
sense of making out of pre-existing material — as closely 
analogous to that of the origin of species as our limited 
experience can furnish us — viz. : the case of the various 
forms of habitation, or house, which man has con- 
structed for himself. The bark hut, the log cabin, the 
substantial farm-house, the brown-stone city residence, 
and the marble palace have succeeded each other in 
regular order, from a the primordial to the most per- 
fect," as civilization has advanced. But these are not the 
only variations we meet with. In Russia houses are built 
with thick walls and with openings small and few in num- 
ber, and capable of being tightly closed. In the southern 
United States houses are built with many and large doors 
and windows, and open piazzas. In Venezuela they are 
built on piles, so as to be safe from floods. In China 
they are slight structures of bamboo, and in some parts 
of Africa hollow hemispheres of dried mud. These are 
all variations determined by "environment." Man's 
wants have led him to build houses for other purposes 
than his own inhabitation ; and hence we have barns, and 
warehouses, and cotton factories, and railroad depots, 
and churches, and court-houses, and forts, each differing 
from all the others in certain particulars, the exact nature 
of their " differentiation " being determined by the pur- 
pose they were intended to serve. In all these different 
forms of structure there are certain " homologies " 
which arrest our attention, such as their all possessing 
floors, 'and walls, and roof, and openings of some kind 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 147 

or other ; and there are, at the same time, differences, 
which adapt each to some particular end or use. There 
is an order which pervades the whole ; and these homol- 
ogies and differences would furnish a basis for a natural 
classification of houses, if we were disposed to make such 
classification. 

How shall we account for all this ? Had we no knowl- 
edge of the way in which this result has been produced, 
some might say the bark hut " evolved " the log cabin, 
and the log cabin ' ' evolved' ' the substantial farm-house, 
and the Yenez u elian house built upon piles was the result 
of " the survival of the fittest ;" and they might say this 
for many of the same reasons that similar assertions are 
made respecting orders and species in the organic world. 
In this instance, however, none will say this, because we 
all know that this orderly variation is the result of human 
power, acting under the guidance of human intelligence, 
and for the attainment of a definite end. All these dif- 
ferent structures are the product of man's creative power, 
and not of evolution, natural or artificial. And there is 
evidently a law that has governed this creation — viz. : the 
law of adaptation to a specific end, that is just as truly a 
law, and just as certain in its operation as the law of 
" the survival of the fittest," or any other law which the 
evolutionist has imagined to govern the origin of species. 

§ 53. Huxley 1 s Objection to Creation as Implying an 
Extravagant Expenditure of Divine Power. 

" A section a hundred feet thick" of a certain rock 
stratum in England " will exhibit, at different heights, 
a dozen species of ammonites, none of which passes from 
its particular zone of limestone or clay into the zone 
below it, or into that above it ; so that those who adopt 
the doctrine of a special creation must be prepared to 



148 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

admit that at intervals of time, corresponding with the 
thickness of those beds, the Creator thought fit to inter- 
fere with the natural course of events, for the purpose 
of making a new ammonite. It is not easy to transplant 
one's self into the frame of mind of those who can accept 
such a conclusion as this on any evidence short of abso- 
lute demonstration." (" Lay Sermons," p. 281.) 
On this objection of Professor Huxley I remark : 

1. Instead of using the simple term " creation " to 
designate a mode of the origin of species, he uses the ex- 
pression " special creation," and in this he is followed by 
most evolutionists in writing on the subject. With the 
atheistic evolutionist this is well enough, but not so with 
the theistic evolutionist, who regards evolution "as a 
mode of creation." The origination of a species by 
evolution is as much a " special creation " in his view of 
the matter as the origination of a species in any other 
way. The proper term, if any qualifying word is to be 
used, is not " special," but " immediate." Immediate 
creation is the only proper correlative to creation by 
evolution. 

2. The force of Professor Huxley's objection rests 
entirely upon a misconception of the nature of God and 
the nature of His connection with our world during the 
period of the Mosaic cosmogony. According to Scripture, 
God is everywhere present and ever active in the affairs 
of the world . This truth Paul taught the Athenians in his 
words — " In Him" (God) " we live, and move, and have 
our being." (Acts 17 : 28.) And our Lord taught the 
same doctrine with even greater emphasis — " Are not two 
sparrows sold for a farthing ? and one of them shall not 
fall on the ground without your Father. But the very 
hairs of your head are all numbered. " (Matt. 10 : 29, 30.) 
The era of creation, the era of the origin of species, the 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 149 

era covered by the Mosaic cosmogony, has passed. It 
closed with the creation of man. (§ 46.) During that 
period it is fair to infer that God was just as everywhere 
present and ever active in the work of creation as He is 
in the present era in the work of Providence. To have 
brought into being successively and after short inter- 
vals a number of ammonites was at that time no " inter- 
ference with the natural course of events," for that was 
the era of creation. If there are a hundred different 
species of animals to be brought into being, it will call 
for no greater expenditure of power to create them in 
succession than to create them all at once ; and if they 
are, in their structure, specially adapted to certain con- 
ditions of a gradually improving world, wisdom would 
require that each should be created just when and where 
the improving world becomes fitted to furnish it a home. 

§ 54. Points at which the Hypothesis of Evolution 
Breaks Down. 

Besides the objections to the hypothesis of evolution 
presented in our separate consideration of it, there is an 
additional one which presents itself when we examine 
the claims to our acceptance of evolution and creation as 
competing claims, and that is, that evolution fails us at 
two, if not three most important points in making out a 
complete cosmogony — viz.: (1) At the beginning of the 
existence of the matter of the world. That the world 
had a beginning science testifies in unmistakable terms ; 
and evolution can give us no account of that beginning. 
We are compelled to fall back upon the explanation con- 
tained in the words, " In the beginning God created 
the heaven and the earth." (Gen. 1:1.) (2) At the 
beginning of life. " No conclusion of modern science is 
more widely received or more confidently maintained 



150 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

than that which teaches that in the early history of our 
planet life was unknown. Not only was it not actual, 
bat it was not possible. Life then was not, but life now 
is. Life then had a beginning. What was that beginning ? 
and whence?" (Wainwright's " Scientific Sophism," 
ch. 8.) Here, again, evolution is dumb, and Darwin is 
compelled to begin his series with " certain primordial 
living beings." (3) At the origin of man, bearing as he 
does " the image of God." It is true that Darwin and 
Huxley have attempted to trace, or, rather, to imagine, 
the evolution of man from some lost form of anthro- 
poid ape ; bat most of our sober scientists to-day regard 
what LIuxley calls " the great gulf in intellectual and 
moral matters which lies between man and the whole 
of the lower creation" as an impassable gulf to any and 
every method of evolution. At these three points — and 
they are most important points in any system of cos- 
mogony, far more so than the passage of any one species 
of plant or animal to the species next above it — evolu- 
tion utterly fails us, and creation furnishes the only in- 
telligible and credible explanation which has ever been 
given. 

In his article on " The Origin of Species," Professor 
Huxley has a beautiful passage, to which I will ask the 
reader's attention. Speaking of growth-development in 
its earlier stages, he writes : " Examine the recently laid 
egg of some common animal, such as a salamander or a 
newt. It is a minute spheroid, in which the best micro- 
scope will reveal nothing but a structureless sac, en- 
closing a glairy fluid, holding granules in suspension. 
Bat strange possibilities lie dormant in that semi-fluid 
globule. Let a moderate supply of warmth reach its 
watery cradle, and the plastic matter undergoes changes 
so rapid and yet so steady and purpose-like in their sue- 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 151 

cession that one can only compare them to those operated 
by a skilled modeller upon a formless lump of clay. As 
with an invisible trowel, the mass is divided and sub- 
divided into smaller and smaller portions, until it is re- " 
duced to an aggregation of granules, not too large to 
build withal the finest fabric of the nascent organism. 
And then it is as if a delicate finger traced out the line 
to be occupied by the spinal column, and moulded the 
contour of the body, pinching up the head at one end, 
the tail at the other, and fashioning flank and limb in 
due salamnndrine proportions in so artistic a way that, 
after watching the process hour by hour, one is almost 
involuntarily possessed by the notion that some more 
subtile aid to vision than an achromatic would show the 
hidden artist, with his plan before him, striving with 
skilful manipulation to perfect his work." (" Lay Ser- 
mons," pp. 260, 261.) This "hidden artist, with his 
plan before him," is just what the doctrine of creation 
brings to our knowledge, working not in these variations 
of growth- development alone, but in all the variations of 
nature as well — a living Creator, and not a dead, insensate 

law. 

§ 55. Conclusion. 

Returning now to the question with which we started, 
Why is it that while the cosmological speculations of 
the Egyptians and the Greeks — the two foremost nations 
of antiquity — have come to be universally regarded as 
myths, the cosmogony of Moses, in the light of this our 
nineteenth century, " controls the thoughts of nine tenths 
of the civilized world " ? We answer, in addition to the 
reason already given, that it is so intertwined with the 
record of what nine tenths of the civilized world regard 
as the only true religion, that it must be believed as 
widely as that religion prevails ; there is a second reason, 



152 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

which the reader is now prepared to appreciate — viz. : that 
while science, in its progress, has shown the cosmogonies 
of the Egyptians and the Greeks to be incredible and 
puerile, it has shown, more and more clearly, the cor- 
rectness, in all important particulars, of the cosmogony 
of Moses. When, for a time, there has seemed to be 
some discrepancy between the conclusions of science 
and the statements of Moses — and this has occurred more 
than once — further and more thorough investigation has 
always removed that discrepancy, and this to such an 
extent that if the geologist attempts to-day to write 
out a scientific cosmogony, he finds himself compelled to 
make it, in all its leading particulars, the cosmogony of 
Moses. 



THE PENTATEUCH.* 

§ 56. " The Higher Criticism." 

The first five books of the Old Testament Scriptures, 
called by the Jews " the Torah" — i. e., the law, or 
" Torath Mosheh" — i.e., the Law of Moses, are by 
Christian writers generally styled the Pentateuch. 

The manuscripts of the Pentateuch form a single roll, 
or volume, and are divided not into books, but into 
larger and smaller sections. The di vision into five books, 
as we have it in our English Bible, was probably made 
by the Greek translators in preparing the Septuagint, as 
the titles of the several books are of Greek and not He- 
brew origin. 

As far back as we can trace its history, the Pentateuch 
has been regarded by Jewish as well as Christian writers, 
with rare exceptions, as written by Moses, and as credible 
history. Of late this opinion has been assailed under 
the guise of what is popularly styled " the higher 
criticism." 

"What is this higher criticism, and what does it pro- 
fess ? What it is, is a question we will be better prepared 
to answer at a later stage of this discussion. What it 
professes, is to judge of and decide all questions respect- 
ing the interpretation, the authorship, and the credibility 

* The substance of this paper was originally delivered as three dis- 
courses in the First Presbyterian Church, Norfolk, in June, 1883, 
and subsequently published in pamphlet form. 



154 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

of the several parts of Scripture, just as we would similar 
questions respecting any other book. In the words of 
Robertson Smith, one of the ablest among the British 
advocates of this higher criticism, "the ordinary laws 
of evidence and good sense must be our guides. And 
these we must apply to the Bible, just as we should do 
to any other ancient book." (" The Old Testament in 
the Jewish Church," Lecture I.) Rightly understood, 
no one can object to such a proceeding as this. How the 
higher critics understand it we shall see in the course of 
our investigation. 

What are the conclusions to which the higher critics 
have come in applying their criticism to the Scriptures ? 
To this question it is impossible to give a definite answer, 
for no two of them agree in their conclusions. Confin- 
ing our attention to the Pentateuch : 

Professor Robertson Smith comes to the conclusion 
that a small part of Exodus — viz. : ch. 21-23 — and the 
first eleven chapters of Deuteronomy were written by 
Moses ; but by far the larger part of the Pentateuch was 
written in the days of Josiah — was, in fact, " the book 
of the law" found in repairing the Temple (see 2 Kings 
22), eight hundred years after Moses' day ; and the re- 
mainder is made up of traditions first reduced to writ- 
ing after the Captivity in Babylon, probably by Ezra, 
two hundred years later still — these last-mentioned por- 
tions being ascribed to Moses, in order to give them 
greater authority among the Jews. 

The conclusions to which Professor Crawford II. Toy, 
of Harvard, the latest American writer on the side of 
"the higher criticism," comes, I will give you in his 
own words. In his " History of the Religion of Israel " 
he writes : 

" A comparatively large law book was written (Deu- 



THE PENTATEUCH. 155 

teronomy, about b.c. 622) ; and this, in accordance 
with the ideas of the times, which demanded the author- 
ity of ancient sages and lawgivers, was ascribed to Moses. 
. . . After various Jaw books had been written they 
were all gathered up, sifted, and edited about the time 
of Ezra (b.c. 450) as one book. This is substantially our 
present Law (Tora) or Pentateuch" (pp. 6, 7). 

" Nations do not easily change their gods ; it is not 
likely that Moses could or would introduce a new deity. 
But as the Israelites believed that he had made some 
great change, it may be that through his means the wor- 
ship of Yahwe became more general — became, in fact, 
in a real sense, the national worship. This would not 
necessarily mean that no other deities were worshipped. 
. . . Still less would it mean that there was only one 
God — that is, that all other pretended gods were nothing. 
This is what we believe, and what the later Israelites 
(about the time of the Exile and on) believed ; but David 
and generations after him thought that Kemosh and 
Dagon and the rest were real gods, only not gods of 
Israel. Exactly what Moses' belief was we do not know. 
Probably, it may be said, he thought, as people in his 
day generally did, that there were a great many gods, 
that each nation had its own deity or deities ; but he 
wished Israel to worship only Yahwe. And, in point of 
fact, they did remain faithful to Yahwe, till at last they 
abandoned all others" (p. 21). 

" If we cannot suppose that the Pentateuch is correct 
history, then we do not know precisely what Moses did 
for his people. Did he try to make them more humane 
as well as more spiritual ? It seems that in those days they 
were half barbarians. "Was Moses a reformer like the 
Athenian Solon ? It is hard to say. . . . From all that 
we do know we are led to believe that what Moses did 



156 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

was rather to organize the people and give them an im- 
pulse in religion than to frame any code of laws or make 
any great change in their institutions. In after years it 
became the fashion to think of him as the author of al- 
most all the religious customs of the land ; as the divinely 
appointed lawgiver who received his instructions (Tor a, 
the Israelites called it) from the mouth of Yahwe him- 
self. But it is not very important for us to be able to 
say that Moses did just this and that. Under the guid- 
ance of God Israel grew in wisdom, and worked out a 
great Tora, an instruction in righteousness ; and it mat- 
ters little to us whether it was Moses or somebody else 
who had the chief part in it. But it is probable that he 
was a great man, and did much for his people" (pp. 
25, 26). 

" The March from Goshen to Canaan. — After leav- 
ing Egypt the Israelites seem to have moved from 
place to place in the northern part of Arabia, where they 
spent some time before reaching Canaan. Their route 
is described in a general way in the books of Deuter- 
onomy (1-3 and 10 : 6, 7), Exodus (14-19), and Numbers 
(10-14, 20-22) ; and there is a list of stations (an itinerary) 
in Numbers 33. But these were written so long after 
the events occurred that we cannot rely on their correct- 
ness. Whether, in leaving Goshen, they crossed the 
upper part of the Red Sea, or skirted the Sirbonian Lake, 
or went some other way, there is at present no means of 
determining. There was in later times a firm belief 
among the Israelites that they had spent some time at 
Mount Sinai, in the peninsula called by the Greeks and 
Romans Arabia Petrsea, and that there the law was given 
by God through Moses. We know now that it was not 
there that God gave Israel its law ; but the people, or a 
part of them, may have stayed there awhile. Thence 



THE PENTATEUCH. 157 

they marched northward toward the Dead Sea, and per- 
haps approached their new land in two divisions — one 
on the east and one on the west of the sea" (p. 27). 

I have quoted thus largely from Dr. Toy's book for 
two reasons : (1) It is the first attempt made, in so far 
as I know, to bring the conclusions of the higher criticism 
to the attention of the mass of the people. His " His- 
tory of the Religion of Israel" was prepared for the 
use of Sabbath-schools, is published by the Unitarian 
Sunday-school Society, Boston ; and as the secretary of 
that society states in the Century Magazine for July, 
1885, is one of three books in common use with the ad- 
vanced classes in the Sunday-schools of that denomina- 
tion ; and (2) it seems to me that Dr. Toy has but 
honestly and fairly carried out the methods of the 
" higher criticism" to their legitimate conclusions. And 
it is important in some cases that a man should see be- 
forehand whither certain principles and methods of criti- 
cism will lead him, that thus he may be induced to give 
a careful and thorough examination of them at the outset. 

§ 57. The Question Stated. 

I do Dr. Toy no injustice, I think, when I state as 
his conclusions : (1) That there is no sufficient reason for 
believing that Moses wrote any part of the Pentateuch, 
even the small portion which Professor Smith assigns 
him ; and (2) that the Pentateuch is not " correct " or 
credible history. 

In opposition to this the common faith of most Jewish 
and Christian writers alike is briefly expressed in the 
words — " The law was given to Moses." The long- 
established belief of the Church — traditional belief, as 
the higher critics like to call it — is that the Pentateuch 
was written by Moses, and is inspired in the sense in 



158 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

which Peter defines that word — " LL°ly men of God 
spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost" (2 
Pet. 1 : 21), and is therefore credible history. 

Which of these conclusions shall we accept— that of 
Dr. Toy, or the common faith of the Church ? Let the 
principle professedly followed by the higher critics as a 
fundamental principle of sound criticism — viz.: to judge 
of questions concerning the Scriptures just as we would 
judge of similar questions respecting any other book — 
decide. 

There is a book bearing the title of " Julius Caesar's 
Gallic Wars" which is universally received — by the 
higher critics as well as others — as written by the man 
whose name it bears, and as credible history. I select 
this book, because its author, Julius Csesar, sustains to 
his history very much the same relation that Moses does 
to the Pentateuch : he was an eye-witness and a prin- 
cipal actor in most of the events which he records. 
Why do we receive this book as authentic — i. e., as writ- 
ten by the man whose name it bears ; and credible — i.e., 
worthy to be believed ? Mainly for the reasons : 

1. The book in several passages claims to have been 
written by Julius Caesar, and to be true history. 

2. It has been quoted and referred to by writers in 
every age, from Csesar's day to the present, as authentic 
and credible. 

3. It bears internal marks of having been written by 
Caesar, and of being true history. 

Let us apply these rules of judging to the case of 
Moses and the Pentateuch. 



THE PENTATEUCH. 159 

§ 58. The Pentateuch claims Moses as its Author, and 
to he True History. 

This claim is made in such passages as the following 
■ — viz.: " And Moses came and told the people all the 
words of the Lord, and all the judgments : and all the 
people answered with one voice, and said, All the words 
which the Lord hath said will we do. And Moses wrote 
all the words of the Lord." (Ex, 24 : 3, 4.) " And the 
Lord said unto Moses, Write thou these words : for after 
the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee 
and with Israel." (Ex. 34 : 27.) " And Moses wrote 
their goings out according to their journeys by the com- 
mandment of the Lord ; and these are their journeys ac- 
cording to their goings out." (Num. 33 : 2.) This is 
the introduction to the itinerary of Israel's travels in the 
wilderness, of which Dr. Toy explicitly denies the Mosaic 
authorship, and says : " It was written so long after the. 
events occurred, that we cannot rely on its correctness." 

" And Moses wrote this law, and delivered it unto the 
priest the sons of Levi, which bare the ark of the cove- 
nant of the Lord, and unto the elders of Israel. And 
Moses commanded them, saying, At the end of every 
seven years, in the solemnity of the year of release, in 
the feast of tabernacles, when all Israel has come to ap- 
pear before the Lord thy God in the place which he 
shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in 
their hearing." (Dent. 31 : 9-11.) Of a compliance 
with this requirement thus publicly to read the law, we 
have an account in the eighth chapter of Nehemiah, 
where we are told that the reading continued from 
" morning until midday." 

u And it came to pass, when Moses had made an end 
of writing the words of this law in a book, until they 



160 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

were finished, that Moses commanded the Levites, which 
hare the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying, Take 
this book of the law, and put it in the side of the ark of 
the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there 
for a witness against thee. For I know thy rebellion, 
and thy stiff neck : behold, while 1 am yet alive with 
you this day, ye have been rebellious against the Lord ; 
and how much more after my death V ' (Deut. 31 : 21r-27.) 
The book here mentioned is doubtless the book found in 
the temple in Josiah's day (see 2 Chron. 31), about 
which, the higher critics have written so much. 

It is true that in none of the passages quoted above 
does Moses claim to have written all of the Pentateuch ; 
but, fairly interpreted, he certainly does claim to have 
written the most important parts of it, and some of the 
very parts of which the higher critics deny his author- 
ship. 

§ 59. Quotations of the Pentateuch as Authentic and 
Credible. 

Before proceeding to cite these quotations, I would ask 
the reader to remark the fact that the Bible is not one 
book, written by one man, and at one time, but is a col- 
lection of many books, written by different men, at 
different times, during a period of fifteen centuries. 
The Old Testament contains all the extant literature of 
a great nation for a period of a thousand years. 

1. Beginning with the oldest of these books, other 
than the five books ascribed to Moses — viz. : the book 
of Joshua, who for a large part of his life was a contem- 
porary and intimately associated with Moses, and suc- 
ceeded him in the leadership of Israel — we read : " The 
Lord spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, ... Be thou 
strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to 



THE PEXTATEUCH. 161 

do according to all the law, which Moses my servant 
commanded thee : turn not from it to the right hand or 
to the ]eft, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou 
goest. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy 
mouth ; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, 
that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is 
written therein." (Joshua 1 : 7, 8.) 

And here let me remark, in passing, to dispose of a 
silly cavil, that the brief chapter with which the book of 
Deuteronomy closes, and which contains an account of 
the death and burial of Moses, was doubtless written by 
Joshua, and belongs rather to the book of Joshua than 
to that of Deuteronomy, the first mentioned of these 
books being but a continuation of the history given us 
in the last mentioned. 

In the book of Judges, which continues the history of 
Israel for a period of three hundred years from the date 
at which the book of Joshua closes, we read : " Now 
these are the nations which the Lord left, ... to prove 
Israel by them, to know whether they would hearken 
unto the commandments of the Lord, which He com- 
manded their fathers by the hand of Moses." (Judges 
3 : 1-4.) 

The 105th and 106th Psalms contain a brief recapitu- 
lation of the chief incidents in the history of Israel, as 
given in the Pentateuch, cited as grounds of thanksgiv- 
ing to God on the part of Israel. The 90th Psalm bears 
the title of, " A Prayer of Moses the Man of God." 
" The correctness of the title which ascribes this psalm 
to Moses is confirmed by its unique simplicity and 
grandeur ; its appropriateness to his time and circum- 
stances ; its resemblance to the law in urging the con- 
nection between sin and death ; its similarity of diction 
to the poetic portions of the Pentateuch, without the 



162 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

slightest trace of imitation or quotation ; its marked un- 
likeness to the Psalms of David, and still more to those 
of later date ; and, finally, the proved impossibility of 
plausibly assigning it to any other age or author." 
(J. A. Alexander.) 

David's parting charge to Solomon is in the words : 
" I go the way of all the earth : be thou strong there- 
fore, and show thyself a man ; and keep the charge of 
the Lord thy God, to walk in His ways, to keep His 
statutes, and His commandments, and His judgments, and 
His testimonies, as it is written in the law of Moses, 
that thou may est prosper in all that thou doest, and 
whithersoever thou turnest thyself." (1 Kings 2 : 2, 3.) 

In his prayer at the dedication of the Temple, Solomon 
urges as a reason why God should hear the prayers of 
Israel : " For thou didst separate them from among all 
the people of the earth, to be thine inheritance, as thou 
spakest by the hand of Moses thy servant, when thou 
broughtest our fathers out of Egypt, O Lord our God ;" 
and he follows the prayer with a blessing of the people, 
in the words : " Blessed be the Lord, that hath given 
rest unto His people Israel, according to all that He 
promised : there hath not failed one word of all His good 
promise, which He promised by the hand of Moses His 
servant." (1 Kings 8 : 53, 56.) 

In the account of the reformation effected in the days 
of King Hezekiah, in whose reign the prophet Isaiah 
lived and prophesied, we read : " He removed the high 
places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, 
and brake in pieces the serpent that Moses had made : 
for unto those days the children of Israel did burn in- 
cense to it : and called it Nehushtan." (2 Kings 18 : 4.) 
Of Moses making this brazen serpent we have an account 
in Numbers 21 : 8, 9. 



THE PENTATEUCH. 163 

At a later date, and shortly before the Captivity in 
Babylon, King Josiah, in giving direction for observing 
the passover, says : " So kill the passover, and sanctify 
yourselves, and prepare your brethren, that they may do 
according to the word of the Lord by the hand of Moses" 
And in the account of the observance of that passover 
we read : " And they removed the burnt-offerings, that 
they might give according to the divisions of the families 
of the people, to offer unto the Lord, as it is written in 
the look of Moses." (2 Chron. 35 : 6, 12.) 

2. As instances of the recognition of the Mosaic author- 
ship of the Pentateuch and its historic credibility by the 
prophets, take the following — viz. : 

By Isaiah, who lived before the Captivity : " Then 
he remembered the ' days of old, Moses, and his people, 
saying, Where is he that brought them up out of the sea 
with the shepherd of his flock ? where is he that put 
his Holy Spirit within him ? That led them by the 
right hand of Moses with his glorious arm, dividing the 
waters before them, to make himself an everlasting 
name." (Isaiah 63 : 11, 12.) 

By Daniel, who lived during the Captivity: u Tea, 
all Israel have transgressed thy law, even by departing, 
that they might not obey thy voice ; therefore the curse 
is poured upon us, and the oath that is written in the 
law of Moses the servant of God, because we have 
sinned against him. And he hath confirmed his words, 
which he spake against us, and against our judges that 
judged us, by bringing upon us a great evil : for under 
the whole heaven hath not been done as hath been done 
upon Jerusalem. As it is written in the law of Moses, 
all this evil is come upon us." (Dan. 9 : 11-13.) 

By Malachi, who lived after the restoration, and whose 
prophecy closes the Old Testament Scriptures: " Re- 



164 NATURE AND EEVELATIOX. 

member ye the law of Moses my servant, which I com- 
manded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the 
statutes and judgments." (Mai. 4 : 4.) 

3. Turning now to the New Testament, we have the 
testimony of the apostles in such words as these — viz. : 

Of John : u The law was given by Moses." (John 
1 : IT.) 

Of Philip : " And Philip findeth Nathan ael, and saith 
unto him, We have found him, of whom Moses in the 
law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the 
son of Joseph." (John 1 : 45.) 

Of James : " And after they had held their peace, 
James answered, saying : For Moses of old time hath in 
every city them that preach him, being read in the 
synagogues every Sabbath day." (Acts 15 : 21.) 

Of Jude, or " Judas, not Iscariot," as he is called : 
" Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about 
them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornica- 
tion, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an 
example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. . . . 
Woe unto them ! for they have gone in the way of Cain, 
and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, 
and perished in the gainsaying of Core." (Jude 7, 11.) 
The story of Sodom and Gomorrah, of Cain and Balaam, 
and Core or Korah, is found in the Pentateuch alone. 

Of Peter : " And Peter answered unto the people : 
. . . Moses truly said unto the fathers, A Prophet shall 
the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, 
like unto me ; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever 
he shall say unto you." (Acts 3 : 22.) Quoted from 
Dent. 18 : 15 : 

Of Paul : " Nevertheless death reigned from Adam 
to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the 
similitude of Adam's transgression." (Rom. 5 : 14.) 



THE PENTATEUCH. 165 

"Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be 
ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, 
and all passed through the sea, and were all baptized unto 
Moses in the cloud and in the sea." (1 Cor. 10 : 1, 2.) 
" Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do 
these also resist the truth." (2 Tim. 3:8.) The Epistle 
to the Hebrews, generally ascribed to Paul as its author, 
is, in large measure, a commentary on the law of Moses, 
and in all it says of Abraham, and Melchisedec, and 
Aaron, and of the patriarchs in its illustration of the 
nature of faith, in ch. 11, it takes for granted the truth 
of the history contained in the Pentateuch. 

4. The testimony of our Lord to the Mosaic author- 
ship of the Pentateuch, and its credibility as history, is 
oft repeated and explicit. As specimens of this testi- 
mony, take the following — viz. : 

" Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father : 
there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye 
trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have be- 
lieved me : for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not 
his writings, how shall ye believe my words ?" ( John 
5 : 45-47.) 

" They said therefore unto Him, What sign showest 
Thou then, that we may see, and believe Thee ? what 
dost Thou work ? Our fathers did eat manna in the 
desert ; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven 
to eat. Then Jesus said unto them, Yerily, verily, I say 
unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven ; 
but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven." 
(John 6 : 30, 32.) 

" Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you 
keepeth the law ? "Why go ye about to kill me ? The 
people answered and said, Thou hast a devil : who goeth 
about to kill Thee ? Jesus answered and said unto them, 



166 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

1 have done one good work, and ye all marvel. Moses 
therefore gave unto you circumcision (not because it is 
of Moses, but of the fathers) ; and ye on the Sabbath 
day circumcise a man. If a man on the Sabbath day 
receive circumcision, that the law of Moses should not 
be broken ; are ye angry at me, because I have made a 
man every whit whole on the Sabbath day V ' (John 
7 : 19-23.) 

When our Lord had healed a leper He " said unto 
him, See thou tell no man ; but go thy way, show thyself 
to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, 
for a testimony unto them." (Matt. 8 : 4.) For the law 
referred to see Lev. 13 and 16. 

" JSTow that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at 
the bush, when he called the Lord the God of Abraham, 
and the God of Isaac, and the God of J acob. For He is 
not a God of the dead, but of the living. " (Luke 20 : 37, 
38.) 

To His two sorrowing disciples at Emmaus our Lord 
said : " O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that 
the prophets have spoken : ought not Christ to have 
suffered these things, and to enter into His glory ? And 
beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded 
unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning 
Himself." (Luke 24 : 25-27.) 

" And He said unto them" (His apostles), " These are 
the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with 
you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were writ- 
ten in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the 
psalms, concerning me." (Luke 24 : 44.) 

Such is the explicit testimony of prophets and apostles 
and of our Lord Himself, to the Mosaic authorship of 
the Pentateuch and to its credibility, besides passages al- 
most innumerable to be found throughout the Old and 



THE PENTATEUCH. 167 

New Testaments, in which, by fair implication, its 
authenticity and credibility are taken for granted. The 
evidence of this kind for Caesar's authorship of " The 
Gallic Wars," and the credibility of that book, is not a 
tithe of that there is for Moses' authorship of " the 
Law," and its truth as history. 

§ 60. Prophets and Apostles Inspired / our Lord 

Divine. 

Thus far we have considered the testimony of proph- 
ets and apostles, and of our Lord Himself, as the testi- 
mony of ordinary men* But in forming a judgment 
respecting questions of the kind before us, in the case 
of other books, we always take into account the character 
and probable means of information of the witnesses. It 
is a dictate of common-sense that witnesses should be 
weighed as well as counted. Prophets and apostles 
claim to have written under inspiration of God ; and our 
Lord claims to be truly and properly divine, to be God 
as well as man ; and these facts must be taken into ac- 
count if we would deal with the Pentateuch " just as we 
would deal with any other ancient book." 

What do we mean by " inspiration of God "? Let us 
see if we can get from the Scriptures themselves a satis- 
factory definition of the term ; and this is the more 
necessary, because many writers, especially the advocates 
of the higher criticism, have juggled with the term, until 
in their hands it has come to mean anything or nothing, 
as best suits their purpose. 

The expression is used in 2 Tim. 3:6: " All Script- 
ure is given by inspiration of God," and its meaning 
is determined by such passages as the following — viz. : 
" God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake 
in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these 



168 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

last days spoken unto us by His Son." (Heb. 1 : 1, 2.) 
" When ye received the word of God which ye heard 
of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but, as it is 
in truth, the word of God." (1 Thess. 2 : 13.) " For 
the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man : 
but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the 
Holy Ghost." (2 Pet. 1 : 21.) " Now we have re- 
ceived, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which 
is of God ; that we might know the things that are freely 
given us of God. Which things also we speak, not in 
the words which man's wisdom teach eth, but which the 
Holy Ghost teacheth ; comparing spiritual things with 
spiritual" (or, as Dr. Charles Hodge translates the last 
clause: " joining spiritual things to spiritual words.") 
(ICor. 2 :'l2, 13.) 

With any fair interpretation, these passages cannot be 
made to teach an inspiration less than : (1) That in the 
Scriptures we have an errorless record of truth — a record 
worthy to bear the name of the " Word of God ;" and 
(2) that an errorless record of truth has been made under 
the direct guidance and influence of God, the Holy 
Ghost. 

In this inspiration God the Spirit did not interfere 
with the free and natural operation of the writer's own 
mind, did not obliterate his characteristic peculiarities of 
thought and diction. There is as marked a difference 
in style between the historic book of Genesis and the 
poetic book of Isaiah as between the writings of Thucy- 
didesand those of Homer. And this is in perfect accord 
with what experience teaches us of the operations of 
this same Holy Spirit upon the human spirit in regenera- 
tion and sanctification. Peter and John had characteris- 
tic peculiarities of spirit as well as of body before their 
regeneration ; they retained those peculiarities as long as 



THE PENTATEUCH. 169 

they lived on earth, and I doubt not they will retain 
them evermore : that in heaven, after the resurrection 
of the body has made the work of redemption complete, 
Peter will be Peter still, and John will be John. 

Inspiration did not supersede the use of such means of 
information as, in the providence of God, were within 
the writer's reach. Thus Luke writes : " Forasmuch 
as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a decla- 
ration of those things which are most surely believed 
among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which 
from the beginning were eye-witnesses, and ministers of 
the word ; it seemed good to me also, having had "perfect 
understanding of all things from the very first, to write 
unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou 
mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou 
hast been instructed." (Luke 1 : 1-4,.) It may be that 
Moses, in writing the book of Genesis, made use of tradi- 
tions current among his people, possibly of historic docu- 
ments which had come down to him from former genera- 
tions. But this much is fairly implied in his writings, 
being a part of the Word of God, that when he did make 
use of such information he was guided by God the 
Spirit in the selection of the material used, separating 
between the appropriate and inappropriate the true and 
the false. Nothing less than this could make his writ- 
ings worthy the title of " The Word of God." 

There are two questions which have furnished subject 
for no little discussion in considering the matter under 
examination — viz.: (1) Is the inspiration of Scripture 
plenary f — i. e. , full, such as to make it an errorless 
record on all points on which it speaks, and not in mat- 
ters of doctrine and the essentials of the Christian faith 
alone ? To this question I answer, Yes ; it is plenary. 
The original autograph of the sacred writings was an 



170 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

errorless record, though errors may have, and as a mat- 
ter of fact unquestionably have, crept in in the process of 
transmission from the writer's day to ours. (2) Is in- 
spiration verbal f To this I answer, Not in the sense 
which would make the writer a mere amanuensis, for then 
would uniformity in style of thought .and expression 
characterize the Scriptures throughout, from Genesis to 
Revelations ; but it is verbal in such a sense as is implied 
in Paul's words : " which things also we speak, not in the 
words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the 
Holy Ghost teacheth ; joining spiritual things to spiritual 
words" (1 Cor. 2 : 13) ; and in our Lord's argument for 
the resurrection : " But as touching the resurrection of 
the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto 
you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the 
God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the 
God of the dead, but of the living." (Matt. 22 : 31, 32.) 

Such is the doctrine of inspiration as plainly taught in 
Scripture. Prophets and apostles claim to have written 
under the influence of this inspiration — the inspiration of 
God the Spirit. Our Lord claimed to be the Son of 
God in such a sense that He could say : " He that hath 
seen me hath seen the Father. " (John 14 : 9.) " I and 
my Father are one. " (John 10 : 30.) And His whole life 
and teaching abundantly confirmed this claim. Taking 
into account now, as we would "in the case of any 
other ancient book," the character of the witness, do I 
go too far when I say that to the Christian the Mosaic 
authorship of the Pentateuch and its truth as history 
are established as fully and firmly as it is possible for 
testimony to establish such claims ; that it comes to us 
sealed with the double seal of God the Spirit and God 
the Son ? 

The Pentateuch bears internal marks of having been 



THE PENTATEUCH. 171 

written by Moses and of being true history. To this 
proposition I will now ask the reader's attention. 

§ 61. The Literary Style of the Pentateuch. 

It is largely on the ground of its literary style that the 
higher critics reject the Mosaic authorship of the Penta- 
teuch, Professor Eobertson Smith contending that in 
differences of style characteristic of different portions of 
it we have evidence of the work of at least four different 
authors in the book usually ascribed to Moses. 

The argument on this ground, inasmuch as it is made 
up largely of peculiarities of expression in the original 
Hebrew of the Pentateuch, cannot be intelligibly pre- 
sented in a popular form — certainly not in a form which 
will place it within the reach of even the advanced 
classes in our Sabbath-schools for whose use Dr. Toy 
has written his "History of the Religion of Israel." 
For this reason it is, I presume, that Dr. Toy, in his 
book, gives us the conclusions to which his criticism has 
led him, and says little or nothing of the reasons there- 
for. For the same reason, instead of attempting to pre- 
sent the literary arguments of the higher critics, I will ask 
your attention to what Professor F. L. Patton, of Prince- 
ton, an able scholar, and one of the first logicians of our 
day and country, has written on the subject. In an 
article published in the Presbyterian Review for April, 
1883, he writes : 

1 ' English readers are not unfamiliar with the precari- 
ous nature of arguments based on style. Some of us 
have not forgotten the discussion of the question whether 
Bacon wrote Shakespeare. Stanley Leathes, himself a 
Hebraist, makes admirable use of a controversy carried 
on in the columns of the London Times respecting the 
authorship of a poem, and says : ' If, some two hundred 



172 NATURE AXD REVELATION. 

years after Milton's death, a number of educated English- 
men, versed in the many known writings of Milton, can- 
not agree about the authorship of a certain poem upon 
internal evidence, are we to believe that great weight 
should be attached to the assertion of a German critic 
who, some twenty-five centuries after the death of a 
Hebrew prophet, declares positively, upon internal evi- 
dence alone (for here there is no handwriting to help us), 
that a series of poems are not by him ? ' He is here 
speaking of what he calls ' the imaginary figment of a 
second Isaiah,' but the illustration suits the question in 
hand equally well. 

" It would have been better for the theory of a four- 
fold narrative, so far as we are concerned, had Professor 
Smith contented himself with the argumentum ad 
ignorantiam, and told us that this is a matter which no 
one but a critic can understand ; for in attempting to 
make us see the argument upon which criticism relies, he 
has confirmed our scepticism. We may assume that in il- 
lustrating differences of style between Exodus, Leviticus, 
and Deuteronomy he would not choose the passages in 
which it is least apparent ; indeed, when we read the 
parallel passages in which he holds up this difference of 
style to the gaze of eyes that are kindly supposed to be 
unfamiliar with the Hebrew text, we take it for granted 
that we have before us a crucial instance. As such we 
have studied it according to our light ; and our conclu- 
sion is, that, judging by the differences apparent in these 
passages, the critics have most ungrudgingly obeyed the 
law of parsimony when they assigned only four authors 
to the Pentateuch. Why not forty ? Eor we have no 
hesitation in saying that by the same rule which gives 
four authors and a redactor to the Pentateuch we will 
undertake to show that four authors and as many redac- 



THE PEKTATEUCH. 173 

tors were concerned in each of the articles written by 
Professor Smith and Dr. Briggs. 

il But let us listen to what specialists have to say upon 
this subject. Professor Smith admits that ' literary 
criticism, though a good and delicate tool, is subject to 
special limitations in the case of Hebrew,' and that 
' when carried beyond a certain point it arouses suspi- 
cion. ' Professor Curtis tells us there is ' need of great 
caution in accepting the analysis of the critics.' Dr. 
Green regards the recent right-about-face as to the order 
of the Elohist and Jehovist as ' a fresh demonstration of 
the precarious and inconclusive nature of the entire proc- 
ess of argument.' Stanley Leathes pronounces ( un- 
satisfactory and unsound the results of criticism which 
arise from the application of the Elohistic and Jehovistic 
theory to the composition of the Pentateuch.' ' Imagi- 
nary and unreasonably arbitrary,' says Dr. McCaul, 
speaking of the Elohistic question ; and Dr. Harold 
Brown puts his estimate upon the theory that denies the 
Mosaic authorship of Genesis when he says : ' The 
romance of modern criticism is as remarkable as its per- 
verse ingenuity. ' ' ' 

§ 62. Incidental Confirmation. 

In the case of historical writing, unexpected confirma- 
tions of their incidental statements, by other writings of 
admitted authority, properly have great weight in deter- 
mining such questions as that before us. As instances of 
this sort of confirmation of the authenticity and credi- 
bility of the Pentateuch, take the following — viz. : 

1. In Gen. 41 : 14 we read : " Then Pharaoh sent 
and called Joseph, and they brought him hastily out of 
the dungeon : and he shaved himself, and changed his 
raiment, and came in unto Pharaoh." On this Hengsten- 



174 NATURE A.ND REVELATION". 

berg remarks : " Even the most prejudiced mind in this 
incidental notice recognizes a purely Egyptian custom. 
Herodotus mentions it among the distinguishing peculiari- 
ties of the Egyptians, that they commonly were shaved, 
but in mourning they allowed the beard to grow. The 
sculptures also agree with this representation. " " So par- 
ticular," says Wilkinson, " were they on this point, that 
to have neglected it was a subject of reproach and ridi- 
cule ; and whenever they intended to convey the idea of 
a man of low condition or a slovenly person, the artist 
represented him with a beard. " " Although foreigners, " 
says the same author, " who were brought to Egypt as 
slaves had beards on their arrival in the country, we find 
that as soon as they were employed in the service of this 
civilized people they were obliged to conform to the 
cleanly habits of their masters : their beards and head 
were shaved, and they adopted a close cap." (" Egypt 
and the Books of Moses.") 

2. In Gen. 43 : 31-33 we read : " And he" (Joseph) 
" washed his face, and went out, and refrained himself, 
and said, Set on bread. And they set on for him by him- 
self, and for them by themselves, and for the Egyptians, 
which did eat with them, by themselves : because the 
Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews ; for 
that is an abomination unto the Egyptians. And they sat 
before him." On this account Hengstenberg remarks : 
" Herodotus tells us that the Egyptians abstained from 
all familiar intercourse with foreigners, since these were 
unclean to them, especially because they slew and ate the 
anim'als which were sacred among the Egyptians. There- 
fore (since the Egyptians honor much the cow) no 
Egyptian man or woman will kiss a Greek upon the 
mouth. They also use no knife or fork or kettle of a 
Greek, and will not eat the flesh of any clean beast if it 



THE PENTATEUCH. 175 

has been cut up with a Greek knife. The circumstance 
that Joseph eats separately from the other Egyptians is 
strictly in accordance with the great difference of rank 
and the spirit of caste which prevailed among the 
Egyptians." 

" It appears from v. 33 that the brothers of Joseph 
sat before him at the table, while, according to patriarchal 
practice, they were accustomed to recline. It appears 
from the sculptures that the Egyptians also were in the 
habit of sitting at table, although they had couches. 
Sofas were used for sleeping. In a painting in Posellini 
each one of the guests sits upon a stool, which, in accord- 
ance with the custom, took the place of the couch." 
(" Egypt and the Books of Moses," pp. 37, 38.) 

3. In his " Origin of Nations" Canon Pawlinson 
writes : " What, then, has ethnographical science, fol- 
lowing a strictly inductive method, and wholly freed 
from all shackles of authority, concluded on the matter 
before us ? A single passage from the greatest of modern 
ethnologists will suffice to show." 

" There was a time," says Professor Max Miiller, 
"when the ancestors of the Celts, the Germans, the 
Sclaves, the Greeks and Italians, the Persians and the 
Hindoos were living together beneath the same roof, 
separated from the Semitic and Turanian races. " And 
again : u There is not an English jury nowadays which, 
after examining the hoary documents of language, would 
reject the claim of a common descent and a legitimate 
relationship between Hindoo, Greek, and Teuton." 
Ethnological science, we see, regards it as morally cer- 
tain, as proved beyond all reasonable doubt, that the 
chief races of modern Europe, the Celts, the Germans, 
the Grseco-Italians, and the Sclaves, had a common origin 
with the principal race of Western Asia, the Indo-Per- 



176 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

sian. Now this result of advanced modern inductive 
science — a result which it is one of the proudest boasts 
of the nineteenth century to have arrived at — is almost 
exactly that which Moses, writing fifteen hundred years 
before the Christian era, laid down dogmatically as a 
simple historical fact in Gen. 10 : 2." (" Origin of 
Nations," p. 176.) 

4. A very curious " undesigned confirmation " of the 
history contained in Genesis has lately been brought to 
light. In his study of the papyri and inscriptions in the 
tombs which especially concern the daily life and habits 
of the Egyptians, Brugsch-Bey, one of the best informed 
among the Egyptologists of the present day, has made 
out what may be called an Egyptian " price-current " of 
the days of Joseph. According to this, a slave sold for 
$9.73, an ox for 31 cents, a goat for Yy^ cents, a pair of 
fowls for 1 cent, a razor for 3|- cents. (Osborn's " An- 
cient Egypt," p. 82.) If we turn now to Gen. 37 : 28 
we read : " And " (they) " sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites 
for twenty pieces of silver : and they brought Joseph 
into Egypt." The piece of silver was doubtless the 
silver shekel, worth, at that time, according to best 
authority, a little less than fifty cents of our money, 
the twenty pieces of silver corresponding almost exactly 
to the $9.73 of the old Egyptian " price-current." 

§ 63. The Character of the Communications. 

The character of the communications and the style of 
thought and reasoning of a book often furnish important 
evidence respecting its age and authorship. 

The Pentateuch contains a communication, commonly 
spoken of as the " moral law " or " Ten Command- 
ments," which the author claims to have received directly 
from God ; first, as spoken in audible words from the 



THE PENTATEUCH. 177 

top of Sinai, and afterward on " two tables of stone, 
written with the finger of God." According to this 
claim, God is the author of this law in a very peculiar 
sense. Does the nature and style of this law correspond 
to such a claim ? 

In a little tract published by the American Tract 
Society many years ago, an eminent lawyer gives the 
following brief summary of the moral law, with his own 
remarks thereon: "I have been looking," writes he, 
" c into the nature of that law. I have been trying to see 
whether I can add anything to it or take anything from 
it, so as to make it better. I cannot. It is perfect. 

" The first commandment directs us to make the 
Creator the object of our supreme love and reverence. 
This is right. If He be our Creator, Preserver, and 
Supreme Benefactor, we ought to treat Him, and none 
other, as such. 

" The second forbids idolatry. That certainly is right. 

" The third forbids prof anen ess. 

fi The fourth finds a time for religious worship. If 
there be a God, He ought surely to be worshipped. It is 
suitable that there should be an outward homage, sig- 
nificant of our inward regard. If God is to be wor- 
shipped, it is proper that some time should be set apart 
for that purpose, when all may worship Him harmoni- 
ously and without interruption. One day in seven is 
certainly not too much, and I do not know that it is too 
little. 

" The fifth defines the peculiar duties arising from the 
family relations. 

" Injuries to our neighbor are then classified by the 
moral law. They are divided into offences against life, 
chastity, property, and character. And, applying a legal 
idea, I notice that the greatest offence in each class is 



178 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

expressly forbidden. Thus, the greatest injury to life 
is murder ; to chastity, adultery ; to property, theft ; to 
character, perjury. Now, the greater offence must in- 
clude the less of the same kind. Murder must include 
every injury to life ; adultery, every injury to purity, 
and so of the rest. And the moral code is closed and 
perfected by a command forbidding every improper 
desire in regard to our neighbor. 

" Where did Moses get that law ? I have read his- 
tory. The Egyptian and adjacent nations were idolators ; 
so were the Greeks and Romans ; and the wisest and best 
Greeks or Romans never gave a code of morals like this. 
"Where did Moses get this law, which surpasses the wisdom 
and philosophy of the most enlightened age ? He lived 
at a period comparatively barbarous, but he has given a 
law in which the learning and sagacity of all subsequent 
time can detect no flaw. Where did he get it ? He 
could not have soared so high above his age as to have 
devised it himself. It must have come from heaven." 
And- this is just what is affirmed respecting it in the Pen- 
tateuch. 

As Rousseau, after a careful study of the character of 
Christ Jesus as set forth in the Gospel, said, "It is 
more inconceivable that a number of men should agree 
to write such a history than that one should furnish the 
subject of it," so we may say respecting the Ten Com- 
mandments, It is more inconceivable that any man of the 
age and people among whom they first appeared should 
have written them than that they were " written on two 
tables of stone, by the linger of God," as is affirmed in 
the Pentateuch. 

In our examination of the Mosaic authorship of the 
Pentateuch and its credibility, we have now applied the 
tests by which similar questions respecting other ancient 



THE PENTATEUCH. 179 

books — " Caesar* s Gallic Wars," for example — are deter- 
mined ; and, in view of all the facts brought out, 1 see 
not how any thoughtful man can avoid the conclusion 
that the Pentateuch was written by Moses, that it is 
true history, and, as it claims, written under inspiration 
of God. 

§ 64. The Divine Element in the Authorship of the 
Pentateuch Ignored by the Higher Critics. 

Professor Kobertson Smith writes : " We must not be 
afraid of the human side of Scripture. It is from that 
side alone that scholarship can get at any biblical ques- 
tion.^ And again : " The first condition of a sound 
understanding of Scripture is to give full recognition to 
the human side, to master the whole situation and char- 
acter and feelings of each human interlocutor who has a 
part in the drama of revelation. 3¥ay, the whole busi- 
ness of scholarly exegesis lies within this human side." 
(" The Old Testament in the Jewish Church," Lecture 
I.) There is a sense in which these declarations of Pro- 
fessor Robertson Smith may be true ; but in the sense 
which he puts upon them in his subsequent critical ex- 
amination of the Scriptures — i. e. , that we must deal with 
them as if they were simply a human production, like 
any other ancient book — they are not true. 

The Scriptures claim both a divine and a human 
agency in their production — " Holy men of God spake" 
— there is the human agency ; " as they were moved by 
the Holy Ghost" (1 Pet. 21 : 21)— there is the divine 
agency. There is a true sense in which the Bible is a 
God-made book, and we cannot deal fairly with it, judge 
of it just as we would judge of any other ancient book, 
if we ignore this fact ; and a disregard of it must inevit- 
ably lead us into error. 



180 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

Iii our day the art of making artificial, man-made 
flowers has been carried to great perfection, especially in 
the city of Paris— to such perfection, that it is sometimes 
difficult to distinguish, at a little distance, between them 
and the natural, God-made flowers grown in our gar- 
dens. If we ignore this distinction, and treat all flowers 
as man-made, it will lead to the greatest absurdities. 
For example, take to the best artificial rose-maker in 
Paris a glass of water and a handful of charcoal, and ask 
her to make you a rose of them ; will she be much to 
blame if she thinks you crazy ? And yet that is the 
very material out of which the most beautiful God-made 
rose has been constructed. Or suppose I take a natural 
rose, one that has grown in my garden, and attempt to 
answer the question, Where was it produced ? It is 
very perfect in its form and structure, much more so 
than the roses made in New York or Philadelphia ; it 
must have been made in Paris. And this is the only 
rational conclusion to which I can come if all roses are 
artificial, man-made. 

Not one whit more reasonable than this is the conclu- 
sion of the higher critics from Gen. 36 : 31 : " And 
these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, 
before there reigned any king over the children of 
Israel," that this portion of Genesis, at the least, must 
have been written after the days of Saul, the first king 
of Israel. The inference is reasonable if the book has 
no divine element in its authorship ; but if it has such 
an element, if in a true sense of the expression the book 
is God-made, then this passage must be regarded as 
nothing more than an instance of predictive prophecy, 
and is worthy of no more attention in fixing the date of 
the book than Gen. 35 : 11 — " And God said unto him, 
I am God Almighty : be fruitful and multiply ; a nation 



THE PENTATEUCH. 181 

and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings 
shall come out of thy loins." 

§ 65. The Truth of the Hypothesis of Evolution As- 
sumed by the Higher Critics. 

The higher critics utterly ignore the divine agency in 
man's progress in civilization and religion, and assume 
that all such progress has been made through the agency 
of human reason alone, and by a regular process of de- 
velopment or evolution. Dr. Toy writes : " The facts 
that have come to our knowledge make it probable that 
all the ancient or national religions originated in the 
same way, and grew according to the same laws. The 
differences between them are the differences between the 
peoples to whom they belong. Up to a certain point in 
their development they are all alike, and then they begin 
to show their local peculiarities. Of the earliest stage of 
Israel's religion, the fetishistic, we know almost noth- 
ing ; when we find them in Canaan they are polytheist, 
like their neighbors — that is, they have separated the 
Deity from the objects of nature, and regard these last 
as symbols of the Godhead. Thus much of their re- 
ligious career belongs to the general history of ancient 
religions." (" History of the Religion of Israel," 
p. 148.) 

In common with the advocates of the theory of the 
evolution of man from the brute, Dr. Toy here assumes 
that man, as man, began his course upon the earth as the 
most ignorant, debased, and superstitious savage ; and 
gradually, by his own efforts continued through ages, 
worked out a civilization and a religion for himself ; 
that God, having created man — if, indeed, He did create 
him, a pitiable troglodyte, like the Digger Indians of the 
West — left him to work out his destiny as best he could ; 



182 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

and anything inconsistent with this monstrous hypothesis 
he treats as irrational and unworthy of credit. 

In irreconcilable opposition to all such assumptions as 
this, the Bible tells us that ' ' God said, Let us make man 
in our own image, after our likeness : and let them have 
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of 
the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and 
over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 
So God created man in His own image, in the image of 
God created created He him ; male and female created He 
them." (Gen. 1 : 26, 27.) " Thon madest him" (man) 
" a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with 
glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion 
over the work of thy hands." (Ps. 8 : 5, 6.) Civilized 
man " has dominion over the work of God's hands" to- 
day — over the steam which drives our machinery and 
the electricity which carries our messages around the 
earth, not because he has grown into a giant mightier 
than they, but because he has learned the fixed laws 
which govern these agents, and through the operation of 
these laws compels them to do his bidding. Of any 
other kind of dominion than this we know nothing ; 
and so we conclude that when God " set man over the 
work of His hands," He must have imparted to him a 
knowledge of creation very far in advance of that pos- 
sessed by the Digger Indians. 

In consistency with this idea of man' s condition at the 
beginning, we read, in the third chapter of Genesis, of 
the division of labor : " Abel was a keeper of sheep, but 
Cain was a tiller of the ground ;" of the building of cities : 
" And he builded a city, and called the city after the 
name of his son Enoch ;" of mechanics and metallurgists : 
" Tubal Cain was an instructor of every artificer in brass 
and iron ;" and of music and musical instruments : 



THE PENTATEUCH. 183 

" Jubal was the father of all such as handle the harp and 
the organ" — all of them marks of an advanced civiliza- 
tion. We read also of Abel and Cain as engaging in 
the public worship of God : the one, by bloody sacrifice, 
which he " offered in faith" (Heb. 11 : 4), the repre- 
sentative of the religion of the Gospel; the other, by 
his offering of the fruit of the ground, the representative 
of " natural religion" — the two great phases of religious 
thought among the civilized peoples of to-day. From 
this condition of advanced civilization the Scriptures 
teach, us that man sank from generation to generation, 
through the degrading influence of sin, until Christianity, 
in its form of world-wide activity, commenced its re- 
claiming work. On many tribes and peoples Christian- 
ity has not yet been brought to bear, and they are the 
troglodytes and cannibals of to-day in " the paleolithic 
or old Stone Age" of their existence. Among others it 
has long been at work — e. g. , the peoples of Great Britain 
and America, and they lead the van of civilization, and 
dominate the world. 

With this scriptural idea of the course of civilization, 
the facts of authentic history and the monuments of 
antiquity all agree. The oldest civilization of which we 
can learn anything with certainty outside the records of 
Scripture is the Egyptian ; and among the monuments 
of this Egyptian civilization the grandest are confessedly 
the oldest ; and the oldest form of Egypt's religion is 
the purest. So it is with the Assyrian and Indian civili- 
zations, the written and monumental records of which 
have lately been disentombed. On our western conti- 
nent the civilization of the empire of the Incas, in South 
America, was far in advance of that of their descendants 
in our time. The mouldering temples of Central 
America and the rock-cities of New Mexico tell the 



184 ATURE AND REVELATION". 

same story. Standing on the height of our modern 
civilization, and looking away into the long-passed, the 
farthest off of the objects distinctly seen are the pyramids 
and temples of Egypt ; and then the palaces and great 
cities of the valley of the Euphrates ; and then the rock- 
hewn temples and old pagodas of India and China — all 
telling, not of savage man, working up through sheer 
force of intellect from savagery to civilization, but of 
civilized man sinking lower and lower from generation 
to generation ; all utterly inconsistent with the assump- 
tion of the higher critics ; all confirming the simple story 
of the Bible. 

§66. Conclusion. 

Keturning now to the question with which we started, 
and which was then remitted to a future stage of the 
discussion — What is the " higher criticism "? I answer, 
It is a system of " destructive criticism,' 1 false in some 
of the most important and fundamental of its assump- 
tions, partial and unfair in its application of sound 
criteria of judgment to questions concerning the author- 
ship and credibility of the several parts of the Old Tes- 
tament Scriptures, especially the Pentateuch, and unre- 
liable in its methods, even where those methods are least' 
open to objection. 

Carried out to its legitimate results, as it is in Dr. 
Toy's " History of the Religion of Israel " : 

1. It takes away from us the Bible as "the Word 
of God" though Dr. Toy would doubtless repudiate 
such a conclusion. But how can a plain man look upon 
a book as " The Word of God," which is but a mass of 
fables and falsehoods? — e.g., a book which holds up 
Abraham as "the father of the faithful" and " the 
friend of G-od," when, in fact, he was but a savage 
fetich- worshipper ; and this he must have been if Israel 



THE PENTATEUCH. 185 

did not emerge from fetichism until their settlement in 
Canaan ; a book which tells ns of Moses as the man by 
whom " the law was given " at Sinai, when, in fact, it 
is donbtful if Moses was ever at Sinai, and the law was 
not written until a thousand years after Moses died, and 
then was written out by some old priest or prophet, and 
palmed upon the people under the false pretence that it 
was Moses' work, in order to give it authority in Israel. 

2. It takes from us Christianity as a supernatural 
religion revealed by God, though Dr. Toy would prob- 
ably repudiate this conclusion also. But how can it be 
avoided if the religion of Israel — substantially the Chris- 
tianity of Great Britain and America to-day — like 
Buddhism and Confucianism, is but one of the " national 
religions, which all originated in the same way, and all 
grew according to the same laws" ? 

" Let no man deceive you with vain words." (Eph. 
5 : 6.) It is the Gospel of Christ, our holy religion, 
which is in controversy. The " higher criticism," in its 
practical development in our day, is but an attack " within 
the walls," just as the atheism of Hegel and Ingersoll is 
an attack from without. We need not, we do not, fear 
the result. We have the Master's assurance that His 
Church, with all that is precious in the Gospel which it 
enshrines, " is built upon a rock, and the gates of hell 
shall not prevail against it." 



YL 

PROVIDENCE AND PEAYER. 

§ 67. A Statement of Professor Huxley. 

61 The history of every science," writes Professor 
Huxley, " is but the history of the elimination of the 
notion of creative or other interference with the natural 
order of the phenomena which are the subject-matter of 
that science. When astronomy was young ' the morn- 
ing stars sang together for joy,' and all the planets were 
guided in their courses by celestial hands. Now the 
harmony of the stars has resolved itself into gravitation 
according to the inverse squares of the distances, and the 
orbits of the planets are deducible from the laws of forces 
which allow a schoolboy's stone to break a window. 
The lightning was the angel of the Lord, but it has 
pleased Providence in these modern times that science 
should make it the humble messenger of man, and we 
know that every flash which shimmers above the horizon 
on a summer evening is determined by ascertainable con- 
ditions, and that its direction and brightness might, if 
our knowledge of these were great enough, have been 
calculated. 

" The solvency of great mercantile companies rests on 
the validity of the laws which have been ascertained to 
govern the seeming irregularity of that human life which 
the moralist bewails as the most uncertain of things ; 
plague, pestilence, and famine are admitted by all but 
fools to be the natural results of causes, for the most 



PROVIDENCE AND PEAYEE. 187 

part, fully within human control, and not the unavoid- 
able tortures inflicted by wrathful Omnipotence upon His 
helpless handiwork. 

"Harmonious order governing eternally continuous 
progress, the web and woof of matter and force inter- 
twining by slow degrees, without a broken thread, that 
veil which lies between us and the Infinite, that universe 
which alone we know and can know, such is the picture 
which science draws of the world ; and in proportion as 
any part of that picture is in unison with the rest, so 
may we feel sure that it is rightly painted." ("Lay 
Sermons," pp. 282, 283.) 

In the above-quoted extract from Huxley's " Lay Ser- 
mons " we have a statement (1) of the practical effect of 
the progress of science upon man's conceptions of nature ; 
and (2) a picture of our cosmos — i. e., " the world as a 
beautiful system," such as atheistic materialism would 
fain have us believe them to be, from the pen of one 
competent, if any man is, to do his subjects justice. 

§ 68. Effect of Modern Science on Marts Conception of 

Nature. 

It is undoubtedly true that many phenomena which 
" in the youth and imperfection of science " men were 
unable to explain — i.e., to trace to the operation of some 
general law, and which, on that account, they ascribed 
to the immediate interposition of a being above matter, 
and ruling over it — the being whose existence Huxley 
acknowledges under the titles of "Providence," " the 
Infinite," in the progress of science have been explained. 
This must, of necessity, be the case ; for the progress of 
science consists essentially in our becoming more and 
more fully acquainted with the laws and properties of 
matter. Yet is it true that in our day there is a vastly 



188 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

greater number of phenomena which thoughtful men, 
familiar with all that science can teach them respecting 
the nature and laws of matter, feel constrained to ascribe 
to the agency of a supermaterial power, call it Provi- 
dence, or the Infinite, or what you will, than there was 
" in the youth and imperfection of science." 

In entertaining this belief, there is no " interference 
with the natural order of phenomena" necessarily im- 
plied unless we give to the term nature a narrow, un- 
scientific definition, which will exclude the mind of man, 
and, indeed, the lesser minds of all living things, as well 
as God Himself, from nature. Our cosmos is a com- 
plicated machine, but, at the same time, it is something 
more than a mere machine. Man is " wonderfully 
made," but at the same time he is something more than 
" the cnnningest of nature's clocks." Nothing is more 
certain than that there are forces at work around us other 
than the forces inherent in matter, and forces often 
mightier than they. 

§ 69. Huxley' *s Picture of our Cosmos Incomplete. 

It is undoubtedly true that law reigns throughout the 
universe; that " matter and force," in so far as the 
forces inherent in matter are concerned, are subject to 
law, and hence that the phenomena resulting there- 
from, where we have learned the law, may be made the 
subject of calculation. This is true in cases such as the 
operation of gravity on the planetary bodies, where we 
have to deal with a definite force and a definite body ; 
and also in cases such as the average length of human 
life, where we have to deal with a number of results, 
each by itself, in so far as we can ascertain, most uncer- 
tain. As Professor Huxley says, " The solvency of 
great mercantile companies " — our life-insurance organi- 



PROVIDENCE AND PRAYER. 189 

zations — " rest upon the validity of the laws which have 
been ascertained to govern the seeming irregularities of 
that human life which the moralist bewails as the most 
uncertain of things." In both instances law governs, 
but laws very different in their kind ; the one, a definite 
law of force ; the other, the law of averages, or, as it is 
more commonly called, the law of probabilities. 

" The reign of law " throughout our cosmos is wide- 
spread — universal if you please — but it is very far from 
justifying the belief that it is a mere machine, or the 
conclusions of fatalism. The picture which true science, 
taking account of all the elements in the complex problem 
under examination, gives us is not the picture described 
in Huxley's words — " Harmonious order governing eter- 
nally continuous progress, the web and woof of matter 
and force, interweaving by slow degrees, without a broken 
thread, that veil which lies between us and the Infinite, 
that universe which alone we know and can know. ' ' It 
is in a very different sense from that in which we use 
the term machine when speaking of man's handiwork, 
we must use it when we apply it to the world in which 
we live and of which we form a part. 

A true picture of our world is made up of hills and 
valleys, rivers and deserts, giant oaks and beautiful lilies, 
and living animals in great variety of form and size ; 
but along with these, and just as real as they, are every- 
where mingled cities and cultivated fields, palaces and 
hovels, ships and railroad trains, statues and paintings, 
and all the vast variety of works of art which minister 
to man's tastes and necessities. The description which 
science gives of our world must take account of forces 
other than those imminent in lifeless matter, such as 
gravitation and heat — forces which have originated with 
intelligent living beings — e. g., the forces which have 



190 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

transformed the oak into a ship or railroad car, and then 
direct its movements with reference to the accomplish- 
ment of a certain definite purpose. Living animals be- 
long to the picture just as truly as lifeless matter. The 
free will-power of intelligent man is just as real a force 
in nature as gravitation and heat, and in the actual 
course of events an equally effective force. 

Let us examine a particular instance of the operation 
of this free will-power of intelligent man, that we may 
see how it works without any conflict with that " reign 
of law " which is maintained in the material world. A 
merchant wishes to transport a cargo of cotton from this 
country to Great Britain, making use of the wind as a 
motive power in crossing the ocean. Did the wind blow 
steadily in the direction in which his vessel must sail, the 
problem would be a very simple one. All he would 
need to do would be to raise a sail and commit his vessel 
to the conduct of the winds. But, in fact, experience 
tells him that a wind blowing steadily in the direction in 
which he wishes his vessel to sail, and for the length of 
time required by his contemplated voyage, is not to be 
expected. Did he simply raise a sail, variable as the 
winds are, his ship would be as likely to be driven to 
South America or wrecked on some desert island as to 
reach Great Britain. What shall he do ? He has learned 
the law of " the composition and resolution of forces," 
and that this law governs the operation of the wind-force 
he desires to make use of. He therefore trims his sails 
in obedience to this law, and so the winds from almost 
every quarter are made to propel his vessel in the one 
direction which he has selected. In substantially the 
same way it is that all the forces inherent in matter are 
made subject to man's control. By selecting his instru- 
ments and shaping his course in conformity to the laws 



PROVIDENCE AND PRAYER. 191 

which govern the operation of these forces, free, intelli- 
gent man compels them " to do his bidding." Propose 
to the ignorant savage to rend the rocky mountain cliff 
to pieces or to send a message across the Atlantic in a 
few seconds of time, and he might well ask : " Am I 
God, that I should do this thing?" But the skilful 
engineer, acquainted with the explosive power of 
dynamite and the swift motion of electricity, aud know- 
ing the laws which govern the operation of these won- 
derful agents, can so arrange matters that the desired 
result shall be accomplished with very little expenditure 
of force on his part. It is the glory of modern science 
that it has subjected material forces to so great an extent 
to man's will — in Huxley's own words, that it has made 
" the lightning the humble servant of man." Is it not, 
then, utterly unscientific to exclude man from our idea 
of nature, and strange that any thoughtful scientist 
should consent to do so ? 

§ 70. The True Conception of Nature. 

In his " Reign of Law " the Duke of Argyll writes : 
" Does man, then, not belong to nature ? Is he above 
it, or merely separated from it, or in violation of it ? Is 
he supernatural ? If so, has he any difficulty in believ- 
ing in himself ? Of course not. Self -consciousness is 
the one truth, in the light of which all other truths are 
known, Oogito, ergo sum, or Yolo, ergo sum — this is 
the one conclusion which we cannot doubt unless Reason 
disbelieves herself. Why, then, are the faculties of the 
human mind and body not habitually included among 
the " laws of nature" ? Because a fallacy is getting hold 
upon us, from a want of definition, in the use of terms. 
Nature is being used in the sense of physical nature. 
It is conceived as containing nothing beyond the proper- 



192 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

ties of matter. Tims, the whole mental world in which 
we ourselves live and move and have our being is ex- 
cluded from it. But these selves of ours do belong to 
nature. At all events, if we are ever to understand the 
difficulties in the way of believing in the supernatural, we 
must first keep clearly in view what we intend to under- 
stand as included in the natural. Let us never forget, 
then, that the agency of man is, of all others, the most 
natural — the one with which we are most familiar — the 
only one, in fact, we can be said even in any measure to 
understand." (" Reign of Law," p. 7.) 

The city of London, with its adjacent parks and culti- 
vated fields, is to-day as truly a part of our cosmos as 
the trackless forest and wide meadow which once occu- 
pied the site of the modern city ; and all that makes 
up the difference between the two — the magnificent 
cathedrals, the splendid palaces, the comfortable homes, 
the busy machine-shops, the thronged mercantile estab- 
lishments, the capacious warehouses, the carefully con- 
structed bridges and docks, the vessels of every class, 
propelled by wind or steam, that move about upon the 
river, the loaded railroad trains that make their way 
swiftly over the land, the cultivated field, laden with its 
harvest of ripened grain, the garden blooming with flow- 
ers brought from distant lands — these, and all else that 
mark the advanced civilization of the London of to-day, 
are directly traceable to the agency of intelligent man, 
putting forth a free will-power, in harmony with the as- 
certained laws governing the operation of material 
forces, and so, subjecting them to his control, making 
them to do his pleasure. Now, if all this has been done 
in what we must consider a perfectly natural way — if we 
will give to the term natural its proper scientific sense 
— and without producing even a jar in the working of 



PROVIDENCE AND PRAYER. 193 

this vast, law-governed machine of the material world, 
what possible objection can be urged to the belief in the 
operation in our cosmos of a free will-power mightier 
than that of man, if the phenomena which present them- 
selves for our study call for such a belief ? If the activi- 
ties of man may not be excluded from a true conception 
of nature, why should the activities of a mighter than 
man — even of God — be excluded or studiously ignored ? 
Of the origin of matter no other rational account can 
be given than that with which the oldest of extant cos- 
mogonies opens : "In the beginning God created the 
heaven and the earth. ' ' The extremest system of evo- 
lution postulates the existence of " star dust" — a vast 
mass of nebulous matter out of which our cosmos has 
been developed ; and this, as to its ultimate molecules, 
possessed of a wonderful " potentiality " (i. e., inher- 
ent power not actually exhibited, Imperial Dictionary). 
Leaving out of account all that portion of this potentiality 
which is the peculiar postulate of evolution, and taking 
account of such characteristics only of these molecules — 
atoms, as modern science regards them — as have been 
ascertained to exist — e. g. , their absolute indestructibility, 
the definite, unchangeable weight of each several kind 
of atoms, their peculiar chemical affinities, in consequence 
of which they combine with each other according to cer- 
tain fixed laws, their mathematically exact forms or 
axes of polarity, causing them to crystallize with every 
angle true to measure, are we not fully justified in say- 
ing, with Sir John Herschel, that " atoms possess all the 
characteristics of manufactured articles" ? And if manu- 
factured articles, then a manufacturer ; and this manu- 
facturer not nature, in the sense of law- governed mat- 
ter, for matter is made up of these very atoms ; not 
man, for atoms existed long before man, the latest 



194 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

added element of our cosmos, came into being, but God, 
the eternal, self-existent Author of all things. Here, 
then, at the very beginning we are confronted with the 
proof of the existence and working of a free will-power 
in many particulars similar to that of man, but far 
mighter than his. 

If we pass now from the examination of atoms to that 
of the more complex structures of plants and animals 
which everywhere surround us, we will be more deeply 
impressed with the idea that they are all " manufactured 
articles ;' ' and this, whether we regard them as the 
products of immediate creation or of an evolution which 
is but " a mode of creation." Study the structure and 
growth of a lily, for example. Note its changes from 
the shrivelled, dark-colored seed to the living plant in 
bloom, of which it has been truly said " that Solomon, 
in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these ;" and 
consider the fact that through the intervention of the 
simplest of mechanisms, in so far as we can see, this 
flower in all its perfection of form, its beauty of color, 
its inimitable markings, and its sweet perfume, has been 
made out of the rotting remains of some previously 
existing plant, with the addition of a little water and 
air — a work which after years of study man cannot 
understand, much less imitate, and again we find our- 
selves confronted with what we must consider the work 
of God — the eternal, self-existent Author of ail things. 

In the rudely chipped implements of the paleolithic 
age the archaeologist discerns the handiwork of intelligent 
man, and hence infers the existence and activity of man 
at the time these implements were made ; and no one 
questions the correctness of his inferences. How, then, 
can we look upon atoms, far more curiously constructed, 
or the more complex structures presented in plants and 



PROVIDENCE AND PRAYER. 195 

animals — even the rudimentary organisms which Darwin 
starts with — and consistently question the proof they 
furnish of the existence and activity of an intelligent 
agent, mightier than man, when they were made ? 

§ 71. Providence. 

When such a conclusion is reached, the question at 
once arises, If such was God's relation to our cosmos in 
the beginning, what is it to-day ? Shall we say, God 
made the world, and impressed upon it certain laws, en- 
dowing matter with its properties, and rational beings 
with the power of free agency, and having done this, He 
leases the world to the guidance of these general laws ; 
that all things come to pass in virtue of the operation of 
causes which He created and set in motion at the begin- 
ning ? ' ' According to this view, God in nowise deter- 
mines the effects of natural causes, nor controls the acts 
of free agents. The reason that one season is propitious, 
and the earth produces her fruits in abundance, and that 
another is the reverse ; that one year pestilence sweeps 
over the land, and another year is exempt from such 
desolation ; that of two ships sailing from the same port, 
the one is wrecked and the other has a prosperous 
voyage ; that the Spanish Armada was dispersed by a 
storm, and Protestant England saved from Papal domina- 
tion ; that Cromwell and his companions were prevented 
from sailing for America, which decided the fate of re- 
ligious liberty in Great Britain — that all such events are 
as they are must, according to this theory, be referred 
to chance or the blind operation of natural causes. God 
has nothing to do with them. He has abandoned the 
world to the government of physical laws, and the affairs 
of men to their own control." (Hodge's " Theology," 
vol. 1, p. 591.) 



196 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

This hypothesis, while it has not been without ad- 
vocates in ancient as well as modern times, has never 
been accepted by the vast majority of thoughtful men. 
A belief in the continued providential government of 
the world by God, its Creator, is common to all forms of 
religion which have obtained currency among men ; and 
is as pronounced in the inscriptions of the Tigro-Eu- 
phrates Yalley — which antiquaries are now deciphering 
after a lapse of many centuries — as in the writings of 
Christian authors of to-day. Dr. Charles Hodge has said 
truly, this belief ' ' is the intuitive conviction of all men, 
however inconsistent it may be with their philosophical 
theories or with their professions." Professor Huxley 
writes : u The lightning was the agent of the Lord, but 
it has pleased Providence, in these modern times, that 
science should make it the humble messenger of man." 
Now, whether we regard this recognition of Providence 
as governing the progress of science, as the expression 
of an intelligent and definite belief on the part of Pro- 
fessor Huxley himself, or as merely a form of expression 
which he found current among men, and adopted in 
order to make himself understood, it furnishes at once 
an illustration and a proof of the truth of Dr. Hodge's 
statement quoted above. 

No one can study the records of the past and not be 
constrained to feel that there is an order in events — a 
philosophy of history. Of this Professor Huxley evi- 
dently gets a glimpse when he writes : " Harmonious 
order governing eternally continuous progress, the web 
and woof of matter and force interweaving by slow 
degrees, without a broken thread, that veil which lies 
between us and the Infinite." The " web and woof of 
matter interweaving continuous progress;" aye, and is 



PROVIDENCE AND PRAYER. 197 

there no Weaver ? Shakespeare but gives expression to 
the common thought of man when he writes : 

" Let us own, 
Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, 
When our deep plots do fail ; and that should teach us, 
There's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
Rough-hew them how we will." 

And one greater than Shakespeare teaches the doc- 
trine of a Providence, at once general and particular, in 
His words : ' c Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing ? 
and one of them shall not fall on the ground without 
jour Father. But the very hairs of jour head are all 
numbered." (Matt. 10 : 29, 30.) 

§ 72. Professor TyndalT s Prayer -Test. 

" Prajer and the answer of prajer are simplj . . . the 
preferring of a request upon the one side and compliance 
with that request upon the other. Man applies, God 
complies. Man asks a favor, God bestows it. These 
are conceived to be the two terms of a real interchange 
that takes place between the parties — the two terms of a 
sequence, in fact, whereof the antecedent is a prajer 
lifted up from earth, and the consequent is the fulfil- 
ment of that prajer in virtue of a mandate from 
heaven." (Chalmers's Works, vol. 2, p. 321.) 

In immediate connection with the doctrine of God's 
providence, the Scriptures teach the doctrine of effectual 
prajer, for which it lays a proper foundation. " The 
theorj of the universe which underlies the Bible, which 
is everywhere assumed or asserted in the sacred volume, 
which accords with our moral and religious nature, and 
which, therefore, is the foundation of natural as well 
as of revealed religion, is that God created all things by 
the word of His power ; that He endowed His creatures 



198 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

with their properties or forces ; that He is everywhere 
present in the tmi verse, co-operating with and controlling 
the operation of second causes on a scale commensurate 
with His omnipresence and omnipotence, as we, in our 
measure, co-operate with and control them within the 
narrow range of our efficiency. According to this theory, 
it is not irrational that we should pray for rain or fair 
weather, for prosperous voyages or healthful seasons ; 
or that we should feel gratitude for the innumerable 
blessings which we receive from this ever-present, ever- 
operating, and ever-watchful benefactor and Father. 
Any theory of the universe which makes religion or 
prayer irrational is self-evidently false, because it con- 
tradicts the nature, the consciousness, and the irrepressible 
convictions of men. As this control of God extends 
over the minds of men, it is no less rational that we 
should pray — as all men instinctively do pray — that He 
would influence our own hearts and the hearts of others 
for good, than that we should pray for health." 
(Hodge's " Theology," vol. 3, p. 698.) 

In an article published in the Contemporary Review 
for July, 1872, Professor Tyndall, writing in the charac- 
ter of a physician, makes, in substance, the following 
proposition — viz.: "¥e will submit the matter to the 
test of calm experiment. Let the advocates of prayer 
and ourselves select two wards of a hospital, each of 
them full of sick persons, and agree upon the following 
conditions : Both wards shall receive the same medical 
attention, the same tender nursing, the same human 
palliatives of the complaints of the sufferers ; but those 
in one of them shall have, in addition, the supposed 
benefit of prayer being offered for their recovery. 
Those in the other shall be left without that supposed 
benefit. If the former ward shall present a larger num- 



PROVIDENCE AND PRAYER. 199 

ber of instances of restoration to health, or of more 
speedy or more complete restoration than the latter, 
something will have been done toward removing the ob- 
jection that prayer is barren of results. At any rate, 
inducement will then exist to repeat the experiment. 
Every repetition, if accompanied by a similar result, will 
go further toward the removal of the objection. At 
length it will be removed entirely, for no doubt it will 
be ultimately discovered not merely that prayer is avail- 
able, but how much it is availabie both generally and in 
particular cases." (Quoted from " The Boyle Lectures 
for 1873," pp. 113, 114.) 

§ 73. TyndalVs Test Practically Worthless. 

I cannot believe that Professor Tyndall, when he pro- 
posed to test the efficacy of prayer in healing diseases, 
used the word prayer in its low, heathen sense of the 
mere repetition of or form of words — an incantation, a 
charm. He must have understood it to be, at the least, an 
honest expression of the heart's desire of the petitioner. 
If he did not, his proposition is an evasion and not a test 
of the truth of the Christian's faith. No Christian be- 
lieves in the efficacy of an incantation. Taking this to 
be his meaning, 1 remark, his test is worthless, and this 
for two reasons — viz. : 

1. The men in the ward of the hospital for whom no 
prayer is to be made, whose recovery is in no way to be 
influenced by prayer, may pray for themselves ; and 
should they find themselves gradually growing worse, 
some of them, undoubtedly, will do so. In times of dis- 
tress and danger most men instinctively turn to prayer. 
The Scriptures give us the story of a threatened ship- 
wreck in the words: " But the Lord sent out a great 
wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the 



200 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. Then the 
mariners were afraid, and cried every man nnto his god, 
and cast forth the wares in the ship into the sea, to lighten 
it of them. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of 
the ship ; and he lay, and was fast asleep. So the ship- 
master came to him, and said nnto him, "What meanest 
thou, O sleeper ? arise, call upon thy God, if so be 
that God will think upon us, that we perish not." 
(Jonah 1 : 4-6.) The picture here presented us will be 
recognized by all as true to nature. The incident related 
has been substantially repeated a thousand times in 
every age and upon every sea. Men who, in quiet 
waters or in health, live without prayer will call ear- 
nestly upon God in a storm or in the ward of an hos- 
pital when death threatens and friends forsake them. 

2. Should the attempt to apply this test be made, the 
experiment in progress will be either unknown, or it will 
be known to the community at large. If it be unknown, 
as Christians are accustomed to pray in their public as- 
semblies and in their closets also for the sick and the 
afflicted, how can we shut out the influence of the many 
prayers thus offered from the ward of the hospital from 
which all influence of prayer is to be excluded, if this 
test is to be of any real value in settling the question in 
dispute ? But, on the other hand, if the trial of the ex- 
periment was generally known, would not this knowl- 
edge awaken a sympathy on behalf of the sufferers in 
the hearts of good and kind men and women, which 
would lead them to pray with especial earnestness for 
those whom this experiment was seeking to cut off from 
all influence of prayer ? If prayer be, indeed, an efficient 
agent in healing disease — and the great body of Chris- 
tian men and women in the world believe that it is — 
then the experiment must, in their estimation, be a very 



PROVIDENCE AND PRAYER. 201 

cruel one ; and the knowledge that it was being tried 
would lead the whole praying community to unite in 
frustrating the attempt. " The voice of sympathizing 
humanity would rise on behalf of these sufferers night 
and day : and if special and specially earnest prayers 
have any influence, the proposed design would be signally 
counteracted. The ward which was not to be prayed for 
would be in better condition than the other." In the 
language of science, in the experiment proposed there 
would be disturbing forces at work which, by no possi- 
ble means, could we either exclude or control, and so 
the result of the experiment would be worthless in so far 
as the determination of the point in question is concerned. 

§ 74. TyndalVs Test Impracticable. 

The matter proposed to be tested is in question be- 
tween scientists of Professor Tyndall's school and Chris- 
tian men who believe in the Christian doctrine of effect- 
ual prayer. The teaching of Scripture respecting the 
nature of the prayer which is effectual is clearly set forth 
by the Apostle James in terms making an application of 
it to the very case under consideration. " The prayer 
of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him 
up. . . . Pray one for another, that ye may be healed. 
The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth 
much." (James 5 : 15, 16.) It is such prayer as is here 
described, and such only, that must be used in the ex- 
periment proposed. Just as Professor Tyndall would 
doubtless insist that the drugs used should all be pure 
and genuine, so has the Christian aright to insist that the 
prayers used shall be the prayers which he believes to be 
alone effectual. 

1. Let the reader notice here that according to Script- 
ure it is not the prayer of any and every man that will 



202 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

" save the sick," but the prayer of " the righteous 
man " — righteous in the Gospel sense of the term, right- 
eous in the sense in which Elijah was a righteous man, 
whose effectual prayer is cited in the immediate context 
as proof of the doctrine taught. In the exercise of His 
sovereignty God may answer the prayer of any man, 
and sometimes, doubtless, does answer even the wicked 
prayers of wicked men ; but He has bound Himself to 
answer the prayers of righteous, Christian men alone.. 

2. It is not every prayer of the Christian man that 
will " save the sick," but " the prayer of faith," " the 
effectual fervent prayer, ' ' the inwrought prayer, as the 
Greek word, energoumenos, is more properly rendered. 
"What the Apostle James means by an inwrought prayer 
we may learn from Rom. 8 : 26, 27 — " Likewise the 
Spirit helpeth our infirmities : for we know not what we 
should pray for as we ought : but the Spirit itself maketh 
intercession for us with groanings which cannot be 
uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth 
what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh inter- 
cession for the saints according to the will of God." 
The prayer of Elijah " that it might not rain, and it rained 
not on the earth by the space of three years and six 
months," is cited by the Apostle James as an instance 
of such a prayer ; and respecting it Elijah himself says, 
addressing himself to Jehovah : " 1 have done all these 
things at Thy word." (1 Kings 18 : 36.) 

3. Christians are, in the Scriptures, frequently spoken 
of as " children of God," as in Eom. 8 : 15, 16— " For 
ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, 
but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we 
cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself bearing witness with 
our spirit, that we are the children of God ;" and sons 
of God, as in Gal. 4 : 6 — " And because ye are sons, 



PROVIDENCE AND PRAYER. 203 

God hath sent for the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, 
crying Abba, Father." On the use of the double appel- 
lation here, first the Aramaic Abba (father) and then 
the Greek pater (father), Dr. Eadie remarks : " That en- 
deared repetition characterizes a true child, as it clings to 
the idea of fatherhood, and loves to dwell upon it." 
Adoption among men is often a mere form ; the adop- 
tion into the family of God is always a reality, the 
adopted child always receiving " the spirit of adoption 
whereby he cries Abba, Father." A Christian, then, is 
one who has and cherishes a loving, trusting, reverent 
child-spirit toward God his Father in heaven ; and for 
this reason, if for no other, he will always pray, even 
when he most earnestly desires a particular thing, with 
submission to God his Father's most wise and holy 
will. Thus our only perfect exemplar prayed when in 
Gethsemane he cried : " O my Father, if it be possible, 
let this cup pass from me : nevertheless, not as I will, but 
as thou wilt." (Matt. 26 : 39.) Now let the reader re- 
mark : 

First. It is a well-known, wise, and just principle 
governing God's administration of His kingdom of grace, 
that He will give such proof of the truth of the Christian 
religion as a whole, and of its several fundamental doc- 
trines in particular, as shall thoroughly satisfy the ingenu- 
ous inquirer, but not " signs from heaven " to shut the 
mouths of cavillers. Our Lord says : "If any man will 
do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be 
of God" (John 7 : 17) — i. e., If any many will honestly 
set about making all right between God and himself, and 
do this with the Scriptures in his hands, and making 
those Scriptures his guide, he shall know that Christianity 
— and as a part of that Christianity the doctrine of 
effectual prayer — is from God. Thousands in every age 



204 NATURE AND REVELATION". 

and country in which Christianity has been preached 
have put this matter to the test, and as the result have 
learned to believe that Gospel with a faith which death 
itself could not disturb. This is God's plan for securing 
a certain result : and, in so far as we can see, it is about 
the only plan which will preserve for man his free-agency 
in matters which concern his salvation and the life to 
come. And, now, what does Professor Tyndall propose 
that a Christian, a loving, trustful child of God, shall 
do ? That he shall come to God with the prayer that He 
will set aside this His plan, pursued for long ages with 
abundant success, and give " a sign from heaven," not 
that those who demand it maybe made humble believers 
thereby — for he has no reason to think that " a sign from 
heaven" in our day would have any better effect than the 
signs given by our Lord did on the Scribes and Pharisees 
eighteen hundred years ago — but that the mouths of cer- 
tain cavillers may be shut. Can a trustful, reverent 
child of God put up such a prayer ? Can I believe that 
such a prayer will ever be " inwrought " by the Spirit 
of God, whose office it is " to assist the infirmities" of 
God's children ? The test is impracticable. 

Second. What is necessarily involved in the prayer 
which Professor Tyndall proposes that the Christian man 
shall offer ? The sick in one ward are to be prayed for ; 
and on the supposition that prayer will " save the sick" 
— and this is the Christian's belief — they will recover. 
Among the sick in this ward there may be a Christian 
who, after a life of trial and suffering sent of God to 
purify him, is now fitted for heaven — one who, like 
Lazarus, has long been clothed in rags, and full of sores, 
and in his poverty laid at the rich man's gate that he 
might be fed with the crumbs which fell from that rich 
man's table, has now suffered his appointed time, and 



PROVIDENCE AND PRAYER. 205 

the angels are waiting to carry him away, that he may 
rest in Abraham's bosom. The sick in the other ward 
are not to be prayed for ; and on the supposition that 
prayer is effectual, they must die. Among these there 
may be one who has long rejected the grace of Christ, 
but in whose case, for some reason — possibly in answer 
to the prayers of a pious mother — prayers offered years 
ago, while that mother was yet on earth, God purposes 
to grant another " season for repentance ;" and if that 
season be granted he will improve it, and so secure sal- 
vation. There is nothing improbable in these supposi- 
tions. And knowing this to be so, what does Professor 
Tyndall ask a Christian man to do ? By his prayers to 
dismiss the waiting angels, and remand Lazarus to his rags 
and his sores again ; by his prayers to close the gate of 
heaven forever against a poor prodigal whom the Father 
was waiting to welcome home, and open an impassable 
gulf between a godly mother in heaven and the son of her 
prayers. No Christian could do this. Professor Tyn- 
dall himself, with his eyes open to all that was involved 
in the prayer, would not ask the Christian to do it. 
The test is impracticable. 

§ 75. The Efficacy of Prayer to he Tested by Observa- 
tion. 

If in this case experiment is worthless, and the test 
which it might furnish impracticable, is there no method 
known to science by which the efficacy of prayer can be 
determined ? I answer, Yes. Careful observation is 
open to our use. 

In establishing the truths of science, careful observa- 
tion is as often resorted to as is experiment, and its re- 
sults as thoroughly accepted. The accepted belief among 
scientists respecting the density of the train of a comet 



206 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

furnishes an example of such a result. Moving as the 
comet does, far away in the heavens, we cannot possess 
ourselves of any portion of its luminous train that we 
may weigh it in balances. But we can, and astronomers 
have, followed comets in their movements through the 
heavens ; have subjected them to careful observation. 
And in doing this, they have learned (1) that bright stars 
can be seen through the train of a comet, and (2) some 
years ago, when a comet in its course passed between 
Jupiter and his satellites, they found that no sensible 
effect was produced upon the motion of those satellites, 
while the comet was detained some weeks by their attrac- 
tion. From this they inferred that the train of a comet 
must be exceedingly rare — rarer, even, than the light 
clouds sometimes seen floating in the summer sky. And 
this conclusion is considered as satisfactorily established, 
and by a method as thoroughly scientific as it could be 
by securing a portion of a comet's train and weighing it 
in balances. 

Let us turn, then, to observation, and see if in this 
way we ean settle the question respecting the efficacy of 
prayer in healing the sick. 1 might here direct attention 
to an instance of prayer " saving the sick " recorded in 
the Bible. In 2 Kings 20 we are told that Hezekiah, 
King of Judah, on a certain occasion u was sick unto 
death," that " he turned his face unto the wall, and 
prayed unto the Lord, saying, I beseech thee, O Lord, re- 
member now how I have walked before Thee in truth 
and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is 
good in Thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore. And it 
came to pass, afore Isaiah was gone out into the middle 
court, that the word of the Lord came to him, saying, 
Turn again, and tell Hezekiah the captain of my people, 
Thus saith the Lord, the God of David thy father, I 



PROVIDENCE AND PRAYER. 207 

have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears : behold, I 
will heal thee : on the third day thon shalt go up unto 
the house of the Lord. And I will add unto thy days 
fifteen years." Here is an unmistakable instance of 
prayer " saving the sick." But I may be told this was 
a miracle ; and, as is conceded on all hands, the age of 
miracles is passed. To this I answer, The answer to 
Hezekiah's prayer was no more a miracle than the an- 
swer to Elijah's prayer at Carmel was ; and the Apostle 
James cites the efficacy of Elijah's prayer for the en- 
couragement of Christians in every age and country to 
pray for the healing of the sick. 

To remove all possible objection on any such grounds 
as these, I will ask the reader's attention to two cases 
which have occurred in our day, for the truth of which I 
will myself vouch. And I select these cases, not because 
they are singular, but because they are not singular. 
Cases of substantially the same kind have, I doubt not, 
come under the observation of every Christian who has 
lived long in the world. 

1. A young man, son of an honored minister of the 
Gospel, was hopefully converted when he was about six- 
teen years of age, and after a season of careful and 
prayerful consideration he gave himself up to serve God 
in the work of the ministry. During his college course 
he " lost his first love," and a worldly ambition taking 
possession of his soul, he determined to turn to the pro- 
fession of the law as his life-work. Shortly after com- 
mencing the study of law he was prostrated by an attack 
of sickness which all his friends, and he himself, thought 
must prove fatal. His sickness was of such a kind as to 
leave him in the undisturbed possession of his powers of 
thought and reasoning. A godly sorrow for his sin in 
breaking covenant with God was awakened within him. 



208 NATURE AND REVELATION". 

He sought, and, as he believed, obtained pardon for this 
his sin. And then his original desire to serve God in 
the ministry of His word taking full possession of his 
soul, he prayed earnestly that God would restore him to 
health, that He might thus serve Him. Contrary to the 
expectation of his physician and friends, he began to re- 
cover from that very hour ; and he is to-day, and has 
been for more than twenty years, preaching the Gospel 
with great effect. 

2. A Christian father was unexpectedly, suddenly, 
called to part with a beloved child. She had always 
been a thoughtful, though by no means a precocious 
child, and for several reasons her father had cherished 
the hope that as her mind was opening and her powers 
developing they were being sanctified by the Spirit of 
God. He knew that in addition to her daily prayers re- 
peated at her mother's knee she had been accustomed, 
for several months, to go away by herself to pray to God 
in secret. Her disease, a form of membranous croup, 
made such rapid progress that she was dying, her senses 
and power of speech gone, before he thought of saying 
anything to her about death and her trust in Jesus. To 
all appearance she died. Her mother's hand had closed 
her eyes, and friends had left the room to make ready 
her shrouding. It was the father's first experience of 
parting with a child, the first death in the family, and 
he knelt by the bedside of his child and prayed with 
deepest earnestness that God would give him some as- 
surance that in giving up his loved one he was giving her 
into the arms of Jesus. "While he was yet praying, con- 
trary to the expectation of all the child began to breathe 
again, and slowly recovering her senses and power of 
speech, she put her arms around her father's neck, and 
drawing him down close to her, said, as if divining his 



PROVIDENCE AND PRAYER. 209 

thoughts, * ' Father, I am dying, ' ' and a sweet smile 
lighting up her countenance, she added, " 1 am going 
to Jesus ;" and then, slowly unclasping her arms and 
lying back upon her pillow, her spirit took its flight. 

Such cases of answer to prayer as the two related 
above are occurring from time to time within the knowl- 
edge of every Christian ; and in them we have proof of 
the efficacy of prayer by observation — a proof which 
no scientist can reasonably object to, a proof which, in 
other cases, Professor Tyndall himself would consider 
just as satisfactory as any which could be furnished by 
experiment. 

§ 76. Prayer Instinctive. 

" Wherever there is religion, true or false, there is 
prayer. Even the speculative atheist, when pressed by 
danger, has been known to belie his pretended creed by 
calling in anguish upon the God whom he denied. This 
natural instinct of prayer reposes for its ground on God's 
perfections and man's dependence and wants. And so 
long as these two facts remain what they are, man must 
be a praying creature. Emotion and the expression of 
emotion are the unavoidable because natural outgoings 
of his powers. He cannot but put forth his activity in 
efforts tending to the objects of his desires ; he must 
cease first to be man ; and prayer is the inevitable, the 
natural effort of the dependent creature, in view of 
exigencies above his own powers. To tell him who be- 
lieves in a God not to pray is to command him to cease 
to be a man." (Dabney's " Theology," p. 715.) 

" Among all the moral instincts of man there is no 
one more natural, more universal, more unconquerable 
than prayer. To prayer the child applies himself with 
eafrer teachableness. On prayer the aged man falls back 



210 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

as on a refuge against decay and solitariness. Prayer 
rises spontaneously to young lips which can scarcely 
lisp the name of God, and to the dying lips which have 
no longer strength to pronounce that name. In all peo- 
ples, renowned or obscure, civilized or savage, one meets 
with acts and set forms of invocation. Wherever man 
lives, under certain circumstances, at certain hours, 
under the dominion of certain impressions of the soul, 
his eyes raise themselves, his hands seek each other, his 
knees bow, to petition or to give thanks, to adore or to 
deprecate. "With joy or with fear, openly or in the 
secrecy of his heart, it is to prayer that man betakes him- 
self, in the last resort, to fill up the void of his soul, or 
to bear the burdens of his destiny. It is in prayer that 
he seeks, when all is failing him, support for his weak- 
ness, comfort in his afflictions, encouragement for his 
virtue." (M. Guizot, as quoted in the " Boyle Lect- 
ures for 1873," pp. 6Q, 67.) 

u Grant God and man (God's yet unf alien creature) 
standing in His presence, conscious of God's power, 
wisdom, and goodness, and of his own dependence upon 
Him, and prayer is an intuitive idea. It remains intuitive 
when man stands before God as a fallen creature, con- 
scious how far he has gone from original righteousness, 
though it requires reassuring under his thus altered moral 
circumstances. ... It remains intuitive, though it re- 
quires redirecting, when man has slighted the one true 
God, and addressed himself to other objects of worship, 
whether instead of Him or beside Him. It remains in- 
tuitive when man has asked amiss that he may expend 
what he obtains upon his lusts, though it requires formu- 
lating, as Christ formulated it in His rehearsal of the 
Lord's Prayer, first to His disciples and then to a large 
auditory. It remains intuitive, though, when the ful- 



PROVIDENCE AND PRAYER. 211 

ness of time was come, Christ was j>lainly set forth as 
the medium through whom it is to be offered, and the 
Holy Spirit was made known as co-operating with the 
human spirit in its utterance. By such revelations it is 
sublimed, indeed, and purified, but it is not thereby ren- 
dered less an intuitive effort on the part of man. These 
several and successive inter workings gave prayer a larger 
scope, or reassured or extended it, or recalled it from 
abnormal movement, or rescued it from utter perversion, 
or showed man the most appropriate channel through 
which it should pass, and the most effectual aid by whiclj 
his own effort might be sustained. They did not origi- 
nate it. Man found the faculty or tendency toward it 
within him, and practised it from the beginning." (Dr. 
Hessey's " Boyle Lectures for 1873," pp. 11, 12.) 

I have given the arguments for the instinctive nature 
of prayer in the form of lengthened extracts from the 
writings of others rather than in my own words for two 
reasons : (1) Because they are therein certainly as clearly 
expressed as I could hope to express them ; and (2) that 
the scientific reader, who may not be familiar with 
modern Christian literature, may see that on this point 
leading Christian writers of different schools in theology 
are agreed. 

Paley defines instinct as " a propensity prior to experi- 
ence and independent of instruction." u The nest of 
the bird, the honeycomb of the bee, the web of the 
spider, the threads' of the silkworm, the holes or houses 
of the beaver, are all executed by instinct, and are not 
more perfect now than they were long ages ago. In the 
beginning of life we do much by instinct and little by 
understanding ; and even w^hen arrived at maturity 
there are innumerable occasions on which, because reason 
cannot guide us, we must be guided by instinct. The 



212 NATURE AND REVELATION. 

complex machinery of nerves and muscles necessary to 
swallowing our food, walking, etc. , is set agoing by in- 
stinct. The motion of our eyelids, and those sudden 
motions which we make to avoid sudden danger, are all 
instinctive.'' (Imperial Dictionary, art. " Instinct. '') 

The Duke of Argyll has well said : " To account for 
instinct by experience " — as Darwin has done — " is noth- 
ing but an Irish bull. It denies the existence of things 
which are nevertheless assumed in the very terms of the 
denial ; it elevates into a cause that which must in its 
nature be a consequence, and a consequence, too, of the 
very cause which is denied. Congenital instincts and 
hereditary powers and pre-established harmonies are the 
origin of all experience, and without them no one step 
in experience could ever be gained." (" Unity of Na- 
ture," p. 94.) 

Instincts, then, are a part of the original constitution 
of man and the lower animals ; they come directly from 
God our Creator ; and hence it is, as scientists univer- 
sally admit, instinct, within its proper sphere, is a safer, 
more unvarying guide than reason. We trust to its guid- 
ance in all other directions ; why should we distrust it 
when it would lead us to God's mercy -seat in prayer ? 

In closing his discussion of instinct, Paley, having re- 
ferred to the sacrifice a bird makes in sitting upon her 
nest at the very season when everything invites her 
abroad, writes : "I never see a bird in that situation 
but 1 recognize an invisible hand detaining the contented 
prisoner from her fields and groves for the purpose, as 
the event proves, the most worthy of the sacrifice, the 
most important, the most beneficial." (Pal ey's Works, 
vol. 4, p. 210.) That same invisible hand; — invisible to 
the eye of sense only, not to the eye of faith — it is which 
would lead man in his helplessness to an Almighty God, 



PROVIDENCE AND PRAYER. 213 

and in his guiltiness to God his Saviour. In his words, 
" O Thou that hearest prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh 
come " (Ps. 65 : 2), the psalmist gives utterance at once 
to a profound truth of philosophy and to a prophecy. A 
prayer-hearing God is man's great necessity ; and to a 
prayer-hearing God, sooner or later, shall the gathering 
of the people be. 



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plete and best work of the kind with which I am acquainted." 

HON. ABRAM S. HEWITT. - The completeness of its indices 
is simply astonishing." 

HON. F. T. FRELINGHUYSEN, Secretary of State. « Am 
much pkased with the Cyclopaedia of Quotations." 

HENRY WARD BEECHER. "Good all the way through, 
especially the proverbs of all nations." 

HENR Y W. LONGFELLOW. " Can hardly fail to be a very 
successful and favorite volume." 

WENDELL PHILLIPS. "Its variety and fullness and the 
completeness of its index gives it rare value to the scholar." 

Royal octavo, over 900 pp. Cloth, $5.00; Sheep, $6.50: Fancy 
Cloth, Extra Gilt, $7.50; Half Morocco, Gilt, $8.00; Full Morocco, 
Extra Finish and Gilt, $10.00. 



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